Dante's Night at Freddy's 2: Animatronic Boogaloo
by MJTR
Summary: Dante and the animatronics are back for round two... Is Freddy ready?
1. Chapter 1

[[To my dear fans, particularly the Five Nights at Freddy's crowd:

Please bear in mind while reading this that it is meant as a follow up to _Dante's Night at Freddy's_ first and a parody of _Five Nights at Freddy's 2_ second. A lot of the jokes have more to do with the first fic than the second game, though those are present too. Also keep in mind much of this was written before _every _plot detail and Easter egg in Freddy's 2 was discovered, and I liked the product I was already working towards.

And yes, I am aware of the twist at the end of _Freddy's 2_.

Please bear with me on this one, I don't think chapters are going to come as quick as they did the first time.]]

Dante's Night at Freddy's 2:

Animatronic Boogaloo

It began with whiskey and pancakes.

It was a decidedly un-spectacular night in a small dive-bar a few miles outside the tiny town of Entia. At around 8 PM on a Wednesday night, the bar was most notably frequented by a pair of increasingly intoxicated demon hunters and a little old girl.

"I tell ya Big Red- _hic_-, you just can't keep business going around these parts anymore." The slimmer, pale skinned and white haired one remarked, downing another shot of Jack Daniels. "Use' ta be I couldn't get rid of em'. Now I can't even turn a profit."

"You should talk to the Bureau again," his friend, a gigantic beast with red skin replied. "I'll bet they'd take you back, put you on their payroll… You left when you were -_hic_- what, sixteen or something?"

"Daddy, what's the Bureau?" The white haired man's daughter asked.

"They're the people who legally do what Daddy used to do every day," he said with another hiccup. "We hung out in the 80's. That's where me and HB here first met… Couldn't even believe it when they told me you resigned!"

"I resigned _years_ ago, Dante. I told you that during that whole stupid 'Filipino Sun God' ordeal back in 03. I wasn't even associated at the time, we all just happened to cross paths.

"This adventure is decidedly less grand," Dante said, glazing over. "I outta do a tell all book about that onea these days. Screwing around with you guys, fighting my brother, Mundus and his bastard son… Whatever the hell I was doing at that stupid restaurant. I can hardly even remember."

"Sound too long for one story," his friend replied. "Maybe you do a series?"

"No way man. I hate sequels. No sequels for me. None of em'," Dante slurred. "You make sequels they start putting em' in the wrong order. Then they start doing stupid subtitles and _then_ they do loosely understood, poorly made reboots that totally miss the point!"

"And what-_hic-_ comes after that?"

"Dorks on the internet trying desperately to reclaim your awesomeness, I don't know… Enough about my crap, what have you been up to?" he asked, taking another drink and watching his daughter and friend eat the pancakes that had just been brought to them.

"Beat the crap out of some Titans while I was hangin' out in Greece a while back. Chronos kept going on about some curse he would place on me, lots of shouting, the usual stuff-"

As his daughter dug into another few bites of pancake, there was a loud, jingling sound. She quickly reached into her pocket and produced a cell phone.

"She's like, ten!" His friend objected. "Why'd you get her a cell phone?"

"She can't do anything with it," Dante replied. "Only me and Luce' can call it… Speaking of which… Crap."

"Hi Mom… I'm with Dad and HB, we're out at Lil' Jimmy's Bar and Diner… He told you that? Um… Hang on," she put a hand over the phone, "It's Mom, she wants to talk to you."

Dante sighed and accepted the phone from his daughter, raising it to his ear. "Hi honey."

"You brought our daughter to that sleazy bar?!"

"Going out and drinking is HB's favorite pastime! I can't exactly invite him over to play checkers, Arthur's scared to death of him!"

"Evie told me you were taking her out to that talking pony movie!"

"Do we have the same kid? Evie hates magical talking ponies as much as I do! She takes after her grandma like that."

"Will you just bring her home? You and your friend can stay out and drink all night, but I want my daughter home. _Now_!"

"Alright, alright," Dante sighed. "I'll get her home… We'll do something more 'wholesome' together tomorrow. I love you." He paused, as if waiting for something before he hung up the phone. "Sorry HB, I gotta get Evie home before Lucia decides to kill me over it."

"Happens," his friend said. "But you're way too drunk to get her home. You got two cars at home?"

"One car and a bike," Dante replied.

"Alright. Let me call you a cab."

So after a few minutes wait, a few more bites of pancake and another shot of whiskey, Dante and Evie were coaxed into the car, Dante promising his friend he would be back, if not that night, than for another one like it soon.

With his goodbyes said, he turned to look at the driver, who did not turn around as he began to drive. Dante, in his pleasant, drunken buzz, figured HB had already told him where to go.

"You two feel free to take a few of those mints back there," the cab driver said as he drove out into the darkness.

With a shrug, Dante and Evie both grabbed and began sucking on the mints he had offered. And strangely enough, a haze began to come over both of them. The size of the cab began to distort and shake as they both leaned farther and farther back into their seats, slipping to unconsciousness as a devilish grin came across the cab driver's face.

…

Dante awoke with a hungover, a few hours later to the sound of a ringing telephone. Without even getting his bearings on his location, he fumbled around and managed to answer it with a, "Mmm… Hello?"  
>"Well if you're hearing this, I guess everything went exactly as planned," a snide voice on the other side said.<p>

Dante sat up and rubbed his eyes, finding himself sitting at a desk in a tiny room covered in black and white checkered flooring with monitors along the walls, two air vents on either side of him, and a hall, leading outwards into darkness.

"What's going on here?" He yawned, looking to his right and noticing Evie fast asleep on the floor next to him."

"Don't pretend like you don't know what this is about Son of Sparda."

"Why does everyone call me that? I have a name you know," he remarked, annoyed.

"And don't bother trying to quip. This is a pre-recorded message."

"Something about this seems awfully familia- Oh damn it no!" He shouted, noticing a large poster reading "CELEBRATE" and depicting three animals, a rabbit, a chicken and a bear, smiling gleefully at him. "Of all things, not this crap _again_!"

"We've been plotting our revenge for the last year, Son of Sparda. Since you wrecked the old animatronics, we've been on the brink of financial collapse. But through a… Let's call it, deal with the devil-"

"Ha ha ha," Dante retorted.

"We found the funds for our grand reopening! The only logical step left, we figured, was to make sure what happened before doesn't happen again."

"So you roofied me and my kid?! That's pretty damn messed up, even by, 'kill them by stuffing them in costumes' standards!"

"You and your progeny are trapped within the new and improved Freddy Fazbear's Pizza! Trapped in this pit, filled with our spawn ready and able to slaughter you! There is no escape now, Son of Sparda, vengeance shall be ours! First we will finish you, then our work will resume, better than ever!" Dante glared at the phone as the gloating villain on the line let out a burst of maniacal laughter, continuing to go on about revenge and murder, until he could faintly hear the beat of 'Pop Goes the Weasel' playing in the background.

"Ah shit. Sorry, hang on. I'll be back to the vaunting in a sec. There's this stupid thing- I dunno, some weird puppet or something, it's next to the arcade. You need to like, load this music box to keep it sitting still or something. I'm not on the night shift, I just hire those stupid suckers... Well that's odd… He doesn't appear to be-"

From the other end there came a monstrous, mechanical roar, followed by several screams of horror before the opposite phone line went dead and Dante hung up.

He looked then to the table before him, a flashlight and a tablet with the time marked 12:05 sitting before him, depicting a counter with a number of stuffed animal prizes and a large present box, a separate icon on the screen reading, "Wind up music box" and a depleting timer next to it. Pressing his finger to the box, Dante heard the music box wind and begin to play "My grandfather's clock" before it appeared to be at full capacity. He then turned to Evie, as she slowly awoke and yawned.

"Daddy? Daddy where are we?" She asked.

"You can go back to sleep kiddo," he replied. "Hopefully we're both just having a bad pancake and whiskey dream."

"But I didn't drink any," Evie said.

"Yeah, fair point," Dante said, pressing another button on the tablet and getting a good look at the three simultaneously less _and_ more abominable creatures _things_ now sitting on the standing upon it. "Me and some old enemies are about to have round two… What do you think guys? Are you ready?"


	2. Chapter 2

'Biago Bug: Fired. Terrified the animatronics when he actually _increased_ their intelligence and walked away for the night.'

'Patrick Wolfe: Fired. See above.'

'Felix Kell… Kjell… Jail… _That Swedish weirdo_: Disappeared. Thank God. Always hated him. Wanted to put a gun right to his head and go 'Pew! Die die!'

'Marcus I. Plier: Fired. See above. (What the hell is wrong with these people?!)'

Dante slammed the manila folder he had pulled out of the desk down in frustration. He had grown savvy enough to check the desk at the beginning of the night, but it seemed to contain no useful information. A single sheet of paper looked helpful when it read, "AI control in lower-left hand drawer. Please do not touch. –The Management." But when he opened the drawer he was only treated to a sheet of paper reading "HA HA".

So the demon slayer and his daughter sat in the office as he tapped his fingers impatiently against the desk while his daughter sat on top of it. "Where are we Daddy?" Evie asked, as she looked over the rooms on the tablet.

"You remember last year when you _really_ wanted to go to that stupid restaurant for your birthday?" He asked.

"And you broke the Street Fighter 2 machine?" Evie giggled. "Is this really that place? It's… Bigger."

"Yeah, it must be a different building or something," Dante observed, taking the tablet from his daughter's hands and turning to the prize corner to wind up the music box. He then handed it back to her to play with as she wished. "Wow, did you check the parts and services room Daddy? That rabbit is a mess."

She handed the tablet off to Dante, who was greeted to the image of Bonnie the Bunny's body laying slack, its hands ripped off and decapitated.

"Yeah… I did that." He said with a smirk. He then looked forward and used his flashlight to take a peek down the empty hall before him. "They seriously don't have a door… I mean, even if there _weren't_ killer robotics that would be a terrible idea! You could have kids hopped up on sugar and soda running into the room and trying to mess with the security camera and equipment for God's sake! I know I already said it, but this is stupid even by their standards."

Looking at the last page in the folder, he came to what may as well have been mugshots for the characters within. "Hey, Evie, give me a hand. Let's figure out where all these things are hiding."

Eight animatronics were listed on the sheet. Two of them, quickly identified as "Toy Chica" and "Toy Freddy" both sat motionless on the area marked "Show Stage". A moment later they found the one identified as "Toy Bonnie" in party room 3, carrying an electric guitar. Within parts and services laid the destroyed remains of the beheaded Bonnie and Chica, the latter's head dented as a result of being smashed with a monitor and its chest torn open, wires and mechanisms exposed. As they flicked past the game area, Evie asked, "Is that weird kid with the balloon on your list?"

Dante frowned, looking back and forth between the child statue and the paper. "It doesn't look like it… Huh… I guess he's just decoration."

Next they came to "Kid's Cove", where a horrible, misshapen animatronic body sat in the middle of the room, its skin and fur ripped free, nothing now but a mess of mechanical parts. The paper included the name, "Toy Foxy", but that was scribbled out and substituted with, "The Mangle." However, try as they may, there was no sign of either Foxy the Pirate of the original Freddy Fazbear to be seen.

"Okay, so six out of eight of them are on the map already. That makes things easier," Dante remarked.

"What about that thing?" Evie asked, pointing at a large brown, circular object sitting on the ground. Dante lifted it to find it was a hallowed out Freddy Fazbear head, a note pasted to the front of it.

_We've given you an empty Freddy Fazbear head! You can put it on anytime, and leave it on for as long as you want. Eventually anything that wandered in, will wander back out._

"Oh goody," Dante said, rolling his eyes. "I sure can't wait to put this stupid thing on. I don't need this crap. Let em' all come for me. I handled this once, I'll do it again!"

He began to again scan through the rooms, still searching for some sign of Freddy or Foxy before Evie asked, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" This time however he caught the heavy clanging of metal scraping against metal. His eyes turned back and forth between the ventilation shafts on either side of him, unsure of which one the clanging was coming from. "Huh… I gotta wind the music box again. Give me a minute on that.

And as he did so, the clanging grew still louder, Evie growing increasingly fearful. "Dad… Dad can I have the flashlight?"

"In a minute, kid," Dante said, finishing with the music box and then flashing over to the ventilation cameras on either side of the room, remarking, "See? No problem."

"DAD!" Evie screamed, grabbing the flashlight from her father's hands and flashing at both of the vents, revealing the terrors starring in at them. On their right, the new and improved, "Toy" Bonnie looked inward with its giant, ridiculous grin, the guitar somehow barely poking out. On their left, the maligned classic Bonnie was slowly pushing its decapitated body out from the vent, a single arm seemingly composed of wires and other miscellaneous mechanical pieces reaching into the room.

"Huh… Alright then." Dante remarked. "Let's see if there's a note about that." Dante's composure remained constant as Evie continued to scream as the monstrous, headless Bonnie stepped out from the vent, seemingly towering over the both of them as Dante silently read over another note from the packet he had found.

_They've spent a small fortune on these new animatronics, uh, facial recognition, advanced mobility, they even let them walk around during the day. Isn't that neat?_

"Facial recognition huh?" Dante muttered, glaring and then smiling at the Bonnie he had already defeated once. "Alright… Let's give that a try."

Just as the destroyed Bonnie began to reach for his throat, Dante jumped up onto the desk and then towards the animatronic, forcing his way behind it and grabbing upward from under its arms. Forcing it to crouch with his demonic strength, Dante positioned his head right where Bonnie's had been before he smashed it to bits.

"Hey you! Freak show!" He shouted at Toy Bonnie. "I'm right here. Come get me!"

Toy Bonnie stopped stalling and jumped at him instantly, allowing Dante just enough time to relinquish his grip on the destroyed model and jump towards the desk again. Toy Bonnie was already in a frenzy, ripping and tearing at its counterpart as fast and fiercely as possible without yet realizing it had made a mistake. Dante took a seat on the desk next to his quivering daughter as the robotic rabbits ripped at one another, until the original Bonnie got its hand around Toy Bonnie's ears and began to tear them off before forcing its opponent to the ground and facing Dante and Evie again.

"Oooh, do we have a winner?" He taunted, stepping down from the desk and exchanging looks between the two. Before he could get in another quip, Bonnie grabbed ahold of his jacket, just out of reach of his throat, as Toy Bonnie got a hand on his foot. "Scuse me for a sec," he said to Bonnie, as he then jump elbow dropped Toy Bonnie's face, tearing his jacket slightly. He then grabbed ahold of the increasingly damaged face and began to pull until he tore it free, exposing Toy Bonnie's endo-skull.

He then stood up and taunted Toy Bonnie with the skull. "Aww. You recognize my face, do you recognize your own?" Toy Bonnie leapt up, exposed skull staring at him fiercely. "Yeah? You want it back? Well _here_," and in a single motion forced it down Bonnie's uncovered neck. "Go get it."

This motion left Toy Bonnie absolutely furious, as it rushed down its counterpart and began to tear into its stomach, as if trying to claw the head out from the down-up instead of the up-down way Dante had shoved it. The two violently wrestled on the ground as Dante looked down in satisfaction. Within minutes the original Bonnie laid upon the ground limp, dead, and torn to pieces, as its successor, barely looking any better, tried to force its face back onto its head, only succeeding when accidently pushing it on backwards.

"Hey, nice work there buddy. Showed grandpa who's boss, didn't you?" Dante asked, stepping up from desk again and clapping his hands, which Toy Bonnie seemed to react to with pride. He reached down and picked up Toy Bonnie's guitar, rolling it in his hand for a moment as Toy Bonnie extended its remaining hand (the other one remained in Bonnie's own severed over), as if expecting him to hand the guitar over.

Instead, Dante swung the guitar into Toy Bonnie's face, bluntly knocking it to the ground and took another step forward, looking down at it before laying a booted foot on its face. "But then again… They… Um… Damn it, I am getting too old for this. Evie! Gimmie a one liner!"

"Uhh… Those who rock get rocked?" She proposed.

Dante starred at her for a moment in confusion before remarking, "The important thing is you tried." And, with the strength of his inner demon behind him, stomped Toy Bonnie's face into scrap, killing it. "Well, that was only slightly harder than last time… Why do I get the feeling I'm forgetting something?"

Dante and Evie exchanged looks for a few seconds before both of their eyes grew wide and they shouted, "The music box!"

Dante rushed back to the tablet and clicked on the prize corner to find the oversized present in the back of the room opened, the meter empty, and the quiet tune of "Pop Goes the Weasel" playing from somewhere down the hall.

The next few seconds were dense with action. Out from the darkness of the hall came a face, like that of some freakish marionette, flying in at him, it's smile perhaps the scariest thing he had experienced from the restaurant yet. It soared in, a long, lanky body suspended in midair behind it as it rushed towards his face.

Unsure of what else to do, Dante's fingers began to dance along the neck of the guitar he had stolen from Toy Bonnie which, to his shock, actually produced a few notes. And as it did, the horrid puppet creature froze in mid-air. Observing this with fascination, Dante played a few more chords, forcing the puppet to retreat more with each new sound until he dropped to his knees and began shredding notes to Raining Blood before it disappeared back into the darkness of the hall and into the present box again, as Evie observed on the camera.

"Well, that could have ended disastrous… Though it does support my theory most of life's problems can be solved with a little Slayer," Dante remarked. "Evie, how do the cams look?"

"Why isn't that chicken down the hall wearing any pants?"


	3. Chapter 3

"Can you pass me the blue?"

"Hang on a minute, I'm not done with it yet."

"You've been hogging it the whole time!"

"Yeah, because trying to recreate Van Gogh's _Starry Night_ using crayon is a royal pain. What do you need it for?"

"I want this giraffe to have a blue butt."

"That's my girl… Wind up the music box and I'll pass it to you."

"Fine, but don't forget to shine at that chicken again, the flashlight seems to stun him… Or her. I dunno."

Dante looked up from the sheet of paper he was coloring and flicked on the flashlight at Toy Chica, as the vile creature starred gleefully in at the two. Wearing nothing but her "Let's Party!" bib and a tiny pair of pink shorts that accentuated its hips, Dante had been distrurbed by the thing from the first moment he saw it approaching. To say nothing of the fact it starred in blankly, no whites in its pure black eyes and its gaping animatronic mouth revealed after losing its beak at some point on its way to them.

"That thing is just unpleasant," Dante muttered as Evie pressed the button on the tablet and cranked the music box. "I get the feeling it wasn't made for the kids… But seriously you freak shows, it's a damn chicken!"

"Will I ever be that curvy daddy?" Evie asked.

"You better not," Dante said, still starring with disturbed fascination. "Otherwise I'm going to have to scare a lot of boys off when you get to high school." An idea slowly crept into his head as he made the remark, but he said nothing about it at first. "Hand me the yellow, will you?"

Dante continued to work on his impressive recreation of _Starry Night_ while Evie colored her giraffe's butt with the blue. In the midst of their coloring, there came several loud clanging sounds from the right air vent. Dante acknowledged it with a quick look to the side, but then resumed his coloring. "Don't pay attention to that, Evie. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it."

"Can I have the red?" She asked.

Dante started to pass it off before pulling his hand back. "You're not going to draw him anatomically correct, are you? Because long necks don't mean-"

"I was just giving him red hair!" Evie exclaimed.

"I know what you watch in those science classes. I haven't forgotten what you told us about echidnas while we were trying to eat dinner last week."

Evie snatched the red out of his hand and gave him a glare as there came more metallic clanging from the right. Still not paying it any mind, Dante flashed the light at the still approaching Toy Chica and went back to his work.

All at once the lights in the room began to flash violently as Dante slowly looked up from his drawing. He could already sense the dread picking up inside his daughter when he remarked, "Don't look up, okay dolly?" Evie nodded as she tried to keep her eyes down on her giraffe drawing and Dante faced the incoming horror.

It seemed clear to Dante he had not been the only one to lay a beating into Chica's classic model. Her wings, Dante remembered, had been torn off and, like with Bonnie, the wires seemed wrapped and layered in such a way to suggest hand-like structures. The dent in Chica's head from his monitor smash remained consistent, along with the burn-marks over her chest where he had electrocuted her. Additionally, however, her mouth was wide open and her inner-sets of metallic teeth jutted outward, almost as if the malformed cretin was vomiting up her own endoskeleton.

Dante looked at his previously defeated foe for only a moment before he looked at the paper again. "Chica, Chica, Chica," he mused. "You've seen better days. I suppose you're here to kill me." Chica slammed her wirey-hands down on the desk and starred at the demon slayer. "I see you replaced those stupid wings of yours. As best you could anyway. But I wouldn't exactly say that's the first thing that makes this reunion so pathetic."

Chica reached down and grabbed Dante, lifting him up by his shirt and looking him eye to eye as she had failed to before. In turn, Dante stepped onto the top of the desk and took the high ground. "You know you don't want to kill me Chica. I didn't do this to you." The animatronic looked at him, tilting its head in confusion. "I smashed Bonnie into little pieces. I tore out Foxy's teeth. I shoved Freddy's head into a fan blade until it was indistinguishable from tomato sauce. You? I smacked you upside the head and dropped a few electrical wires on your chest. They could have fixed you, Chica. But they didn't. And I had nothing to do with that… Evie, shine the light at the hall."

Evie turned on the flashlight, revealing Toy Chica mere feet from entering the office. "See that? _That_ if why they didn't fix you." Chica looked at her updated counterpart, who, in turn, looked back. "You know, poor self-body image is one of the greatest crises in the world today. Every day young women are told that they should forgo living a healthy lifestyle in order to look like _that_," Dante emphasized. "Look at it, Chica. That's what this company seems to think little girls should be looking up to. That stupid-smiling, big-topped, huge-assed abomination down the hall."

"And you, who should be concerned about this epidemic, decidedly aren't." He continued. "You blame me for what's going on. You want to kill me for what happened to you. Well you know what? You're the one so pathetic that you came in here trying to puke-up your own insides. Because deep down, you do think that hideous thing is your superior. You don't think you can compare." Chica began to look down, as if she was ashamed. "You disgust me, Chica. It's your job to be inspiring to our youth, and this is what you've been reduced to? This right here," he said, referring to Evie, "Is my daughter. What kind of example are you setting for someone like her?" And with that, Dante took in a breath and spat on Chica's face.

Chica stood still for a moment before she began to shake and rumble. A fury was building inside her like she had never known before, something utterly ferocious. When Toy Chica entered the room, prepared to roar at Dante and Evie, Chica let loose. She released Dante's shirt and punched Toy Chica right in the face, dropping her to the ground almost instantly. Dante looked down only long enough to wind the music box as Chica began to savagely stomp on her toy counterpart, clawing and squeezing at any area of animatronic she could get her hands on. Continuing the frenzy, Chica dipped her head down and began to tear through Toy Chica's body with her sharp teeth, throwing the items outward with every mouthful.

"Wow Dad, that was quite a speech," Evie remarked.

"Yeah well, I learned a lot about this junk back in those parenting books your mom made me read. Not exactly my happiest nights," Dante said, looking back at the fight with half-curiosity.

There really was only one way the battle between the two animatronics could have possibly gone. Chica was simply bigger, broader, and was actually fighting for something. Toy Chica was a stick figure in comparison, wasn't nearly fast enough the trump the size advantage and was crushed with each strike, barely able to raise a hand to her opponent. Chica tore and bit until she at last grabbed ahold of the hips that had disturbed Dante so and ripped Toy Chica in two from there, tossing the ass and legs aside and leaving Toy Chica twitching in pain just in front of the desk.

"You've done well, Chica," Dante said, standing up and approaching her. "The world is now a slightly better place for young women thanks to your efforts." Dante patted Chica on the back a few time and the two remained calm for a few seconds before he grabbed a firm hold of her and forced her stomach into his knee. "But if I'm being totally honest," he said, then crashing his elbow into her back and knocking Chica to the ground in a clump next to her still-twitching toy counterpart. "You could stand to get flattened a little. Evie! Off the desk."

Dante proceeded to the opposite side of the desk, where he had been sitting, grabbed ahold of the middle, and overturned it. A difficult enough task on its own, but far more extreme in that the desk was molded entirely from steel and was tanker-style, weighing over six-hundred pounds. Though a Herculean task to any mortal, it was simple to Dante, who got a good look at both of the Chicas as the desk was flipped and crushed both of them with a monstrous crunch.

Dante and Evie got a long look at the overturned desk and the pieces of metal trapped beneath it before Dante looked down and saw that, during the flip, he had knocked a deck of cards out of one of the drawers. "Wanna play Go Fish while we wait for the next one?"


	4. Chapter 4

"Do you have any fours?"

` "Go fish. Do you have any sevens?"

"Go fish. Do you have any… Man, I don't even know what that is."

The deck of playing cards, naturally, were styled after the Fazbear animatronics. Dante struggled to figure out if his "Toy Foxy" card was supposed to be a queen or a jack.

As the two contemplated this, there came another round of thunderous clanging from the vents. At this point, neither even batted an eye. "Screw it, I'm calling it a queen. You have any queens?"

"Here," Evie said, handing two cards off to him. When Dante looked at them however, both contained pictures of Toy Chica, only further compounding the issue.

"How about eights?"

"Go fish," Evie said. Dante grabbed a card off the top of the deck. With the desk still overturned, the two had resorted to sitting on the ground, balancing the deck on top of the empty Freddy Fazbear head. "Do you have any fours?"

"You know I do," Dante retorted, setting three cards down and watching Evie collect them with delight, sliding them into a book as, somewhere in the distance, some kind of loud, distorted radio signal began to play.

"Do you have any sevens _now_?" She asked.

"Go fish," Dante replied, grabbing the tablet to wind the music box. "Let's see, do you have any-"

"Hello."

Dante froze and his eyes began to dart back and forth. "What the hell was that?" He asked as more clanging came from the ventilation shaft right behind him.

"What?" Evie asked.

"Hi."

"That!" Dante shouted over the increasingly loud radio static. "I can handle all this other weird crap, but it sounds like there's a little kid or something in here somewhere! Where is that coming from?"

As he grabbed the tablet to take a look, Evie looked up from her cards and screamed. Dante felt a cold, heavy weight on his left shoulder. He turned, very slowly, to face it.

Standing behind him was a solid metallic, tall, bare animatronic endoskeleton. Though he could have easily confronted it, Dante took an odd interest in it, as if realizing somehow that it wasn't hostile.

"Hey there big guy," he remarked with a little nod. "You know, it's against the rules to not be wearing your costume… Or so I've been told."

"Dad what are you doing?!" Evie asked. "He's clearly trying to kill us like the rest!"

"I dunno about this one," Dante remarked. "You don't seem like such a bad guy. You got a name like the others?" The endoskeleton produced some kind of identification tag and pointed at it. "Sparky the Dog, huh? What did you do?" Again from seemingly nowhere at all, the endoskeleton produced a pair of sparklers and began to twirl them around in his hands, giving the office some festive lighting. Dante nodded in approval as he did. "You know what? Yeah, I like this guy. Pop a squat, Sparky. You can play with us."

Though Evie remained wary, Sparky sat down with the two of them as Dante dealt him seven cards and they resumed the game. "Okay then Sparky… You got any queens?"

The animatronic let out a loud, "KZZZZRT!", which seemed to temporarily deafen the two of them, Evie moaning a little as she held her ears.

"Uhh… Sorry… What?" Dante asked.

"KZZZZZRT!" Sparky repeated.

"Sorry, I guess I thought you were the one saying 'hi' and 'hello' earlier."

"KZZRT!"

"Okay okay okay. Why don't you just, you know, point at the deck when it's go fish then?" And with that, Sparky pointed at the deck, and Dante grabbed a card off the top.

Sparky examined his cards for a moment before turned to Evie and asking, "KZZRT, KZZZRT, KZZZRT, KZZRT, KZZRT?"

Evie starred at him as she pulled her fingers from her eyes. "What am I even supposed to get from that?"

"Well be buzzed five times, right?" Dante asked. "So I'm gonna guess he wants to know if you have any fives."

Evie looked over her hand and passed a card over to Sparky, who accepted it an then looked directly at Dante. "KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT KZZZRT?"

"Okay, I am beginning to wonder if this was a terrible mistake," Dante admitted, holding his forehead. "Go fish."

Sparky drew a card as Evie asked, "Dad, do you have any Jacks?"

"Go fish." Dante said.

Evie drew the card off the top of the deck and gave it a confused look. "What card is this supposed to be?"

"Lemme see," Dante said, as she passed it over to him. "Huh. That's probably a joker. Figures they'd style it after that… Creepy… Puppet… Thing…" The tune of 'Pop Goes the Weasel' began to play down the main hall as Dante looked at the tablet and suddenly realized he had turned to the prize counter, but forgotten to wind the music box. "… Oh dead God."

Out from the darkness of the hall the Puppet came rushing, grabbing ahold of the first thing it could get its hands on, in this case, Sparky, and dragging it into the hallways as the animatronic roared another round of "KZZZRT! KZZRT! KZZZZZZZZZZZZZRT!" and the two vanished again into the black, quick as they'd come. Dante and Evie starred into the hallway in shock for a moment before the lights of one of Sparky's sparklers briefly illuminated his terrified face as he was jerked further back and out of sight. For one last moment, the sparkler illuminated another figure standing in the hallway. It was not clear, but just revealed enough to display two robotic legs leading up to a pair of ripped brown pants and tangled orange fur.

"What the heck is that thing, Dad?" Evie asked, shuffling close to her father as he grabbed the flashlight off the ground, the sound of distorted radio signals growing louder.

"Looks like Foxy finally decided to rear his ugly face," Dante snarled, pointing the flashlight down the hall only to find it refused to illuminate. Dante looked at it, frustrated, and banged it against the wall a few times, trying to figure out what could have short-circuited it.

"Hello."

Dante and Evie both turned in surprise. At some point in their momentary distraction, the balloon bearing statue had appeared in the room, his cheerful smile almost sinister as he began to laugh.


	5. Chapter 5

Tensions were high within the office. The Balloon Boy had somehow interfered with the flashlight, only the end of Sparky's last sparkler confirming Foxy was on the other side of the dark hall, probably ready to rush Dante and Evie. As Balloon Boy continued to laugh, the clanging resumed until Dante could hear an odd, metallic, contracting-like sound. He looked up and saw the vile Mangled animatronic clinging to the ceiling, its metal body barely holding together as it glared down at him, the distorted radio sounds playing out of its mouth, mostly composed of static. Making things more unsettling was the revelation the creature had another half of a head half-attached to its back.

"Evie," Dante muttered. "Take the tablet and go wait by one of the vents… Charge the music box if necessary, make sure Freddy… Either of the Freddy's, are coming."

"Are you going to be okay?" She asked, feeling fright begin to take her.

"I'll be fine," Dante said, getting to his feet and standing in the room's center, directly below Mangle and across from Foxy. "Daddy just needs room to work."

Evie obeyed her father, in spite of her fear, sitting in the room's front-right corner, across from Balloon Boy. Dante cracked his knuckles and neck a bit, throwing a few kicks before he began exchanging looks with the Mangle he knew was there and the Foxy he had to believe was. It had been a while since he had tapped into this power, hopefully he could still pull it off.

Two roars came at once, and a snap of the fingers accompanied them.

From Dante's perspective, the entire room when monotone as the roars and Balloon Boy's laugh began to deepen and slow. He could clearly see the gold of Foxy's eyes and razor sharp teeth, questioning who could have returned them to his mouth as Foxy sprung forward out from the darkness, and saw Mangle descending upon him as Evie began to scream. A smile came across his face as Dante casually stepped away from his position, his speed utterly ridiculous compared with the near-frozen states of Foxy and Mangle. It had been a while, but tapping into Quicksilver had still worked.

He stepped away from the two animatronics and towards Evie, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder as he snapped again, returning time to its normal flow.

Instantly Foxy and Mangle collided, first with one another in mid-air, and then against the back wall. The din of the metal crash overwhelmed the room for a few seconds as they sat, collapsed on the ground until Foxy tried to push to his feet. Mangle, however, had other ideas.

To everyone's surprise and Foxy's irritation, Mangle did not rush to untangle itself from Foxy's body, and, in fact, appeared to be forcefully pounding its bare, mechanical crotch against Foxy's head over and over again. Through the static, Dante recognized t was playing Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance With Somebody as she did. Both entertained by the sheer absurdity and disgusted with the act, Dante raised and pressed his hands over Evie's eyes as Mangle's torn hands tried to explore every inch of Foxy's being as he tried to force her off of him.

When Dante looked to the opposite corner, he realized the reaction was not only his own. Balloon Boy's broad smile had somehow overturned itself into a horrified, disgusted frown as Mangle continued to grope Foxy's form. Intrigued, Dante, still holding his hands over Evie's eyes, took a few steps closer and realized Balloon Boy's sign had been altered. What had once read, "Balloons!" now read "KILL ME!"

"Having a little trouble processing this buddy?" Dante chuckled, looking down at the robotic child.

"Hi! Hello! Hi! Hello! Hello! Hi! Hello! Hi!" Balloon Boy replied frantically.

"Oh great, is that all you can say?"

"Hi!"

"Well your sign can clearly change. Is it another one of those stupid times when I have to look away?"

"Hello!"

"Dad, what's happening? What's all that noise? And where's that old people music coming from?"

"Hang on a sec kid," Dante said, looking down at her and stroking her hair for a moment before looking back at Balloon Boy to see his sign now read, "Please… PLEASE! This is unbearable! It's so disgusting!"

"You have any suggestions?" Dante asked, looking away again to find a sign that read, "The bleach… They keep bleach bleach inside the cabinet behind me. Usually use it to clean up sorry bastards like you…"

As the music grew louder and Mangle became more aggressive, Dante tapped Evie's back, saying, "Go back to the corner. Charge the box and look for Freddy. Don't look up. You seriously don't want to see this."

As Evie departed, trying to avert her eyes, Dante opened the cabinet Balloon Boy had mentioned and found the bleach. With a backhanded slap, Dante knocked off Balloon Boy's hat, revealing a hole that led right to the center of his mainframe. With that, Dante overturned the bleach and drained it into his body. Balloon Boy instantly began to shudder and spark, his, "Hi"'s and "Hello"'s growing disjointed and broken as his sign now read, "T-T-THANK Y-O-O-U-u-u-u…." as his head fell, signaling his death. Dante only had a moment to be satisfied with this before he looked up and saw what had become of Foxy and Mangle.

Somewhere amidst Mangle's lust-fueled assault, the wiring and tech of her and Foxy's bodies had become intertwined. Foxy looked on at their united form in shock as Mangle opened its mouth and released, amongst heavy static, Rick Astley's "Together Forever".

It was now Dante's turn to be frozen as he starred at the two, so beyond any conceivable form of surprise that he wasn't ready when the two-and-a-half-headed creature tackled him, forcing him to the ground and every one of what felt like five hands wrapping around his throat. Dante grit his teeth, annoyed that he had wasted the power necessary to push himself into Devil Trigger in order to trigger his Quicksilver trick. The two let out static-filled roars right in his face as he struggled to regain his handle on the situation.

Foxy and Mangle were then both smacked with one of Mangle's own legs. Both of them looked up at Evie, who had pulled Mangle's extremity free and was grabbing at any others she could, either attacking them with the pieces she removed or tossing them aside. The two foxes jerked upward at her and let out another roar, Foxy's mouth opening wide enough to nearly fit her head within.

In reaction, Dante's inner papa wolf kicked in as he pushed to his feet and smashed their heads together. "You almost got bite of 87'd," Dante said to his daughter. Grabbing Foxy's head firmly and breaking and twisting his neck in a clockwise motion until Foxy's head was clinging desperately to his neck, having been flipped upside-down and then grabbed his and Mangle's heads at the same time. "Why don't you two bite and make up?"

Dante then again sent their heads crashing into one another, this time fitting both of their gigantic maws into their foreheads as the two foxes began to violently chomp. After just a few ugly bites, they seemed to freeze before the pair crashed to the ground, barely able to twitch. "It's amazing what the animatronic body can do without the frontal lobe," Dante sneered, grabbing the bleach again, finding the point where he had ripped open Foxy before and pouring it liberally in and across Mangle's exposed endoskeleton until they both fell limp and lifeless, Mangle letting out a final call of, "Died in Your Arms".

"Thanks a lot back there Evie," Dante said, brushing himself off. "Did you uh… Did you see any of that?"

"You were right. I seriously wish I hadn't peeked," Evie said, looking down.

"That music box still charged?" Dante asked.

"Yeah… There's um… There's something else though."

"Let's see if its worse than this," Dante replied, clicking the flashlight over and over with no results, and he threw the dead machine in frustration.

Dante took the tablet from his daughter's hand and found the show stage empty. Toy Freddy was on the move, and if the original Freddy was hiding somewhere, they had no idea where. Dante gave this little mind. "Gimmie your phone," he said. "If we're stuck in here, I really wanna try and order some food already."

"I don't think I'm getting any reception in here," Evie said. Dante looked at her phone to find she was right. No available service. "Besides, I thought I could only call you and Mom."

"Yeah, well there's a password for emergencies. And I'm really hungry, so this is an emergency." Dante said, walking towards the overturned desk and finding the phone, surprisingly, unharmed. Looking through the cabinet the bleach had been in, he found and ignored what appeared to be a knock-off video game console and some games and found a phonebook with the cover page torn off. He shrugged and sat down next to Evie, the two looking for somewhere to call and relieve the stress of the night.


	6. Chapter 6

"Herro? This Tsing Tsong the Singing Panda Chinese Restaurant and Entertainment, take your order pwease."

Dante pinched the area between his eyes, using everything in his power to stifle a laugh. He knew there was absolutely nothing funny about the incredibly stereotypical Chinese accent the man on the phone had, but the exhaustion and lingering whiskey were taking their toll.

"Uhh… Yeah, hi. Do you guys do delivery?"

"Yes, we deriver. Take your order?"

"Yeah, can I get the Mu Shu Pork, extra pancakes, two eggrolls… Do you do, like, kid-sized portions? I'm here with my daughter… Yeah, great, orange chicken, that size… Hang on," he put a hand to the phone and asked Evie, "You want some hot and sour?"

"Can I have egg drop?"

"One hot and sour soup, one egg drop and… Yeah, I think that's it."

"Where you at?"

"Freddy Fazbear's Pizza."

"Oh crap. Hey, I sowwy, I not allowed to deriver there."

"What? Why?"

"You a competitor."

"I'm not even an employee! We were kidnapped!"

"Kidnapped? Then why you call me instead of call police?"

"Cause I don't want to get anyone else involved, I'm trying to keep this low key, yada yada…But seriously, you can't, like, drop it off outside the door or something?"

"No. So sowwy but no. I would have to… Hang on." There was a loud, sudden crashing sound from the other side of the phone before the not-at-all-hilarious stereotype returned. "Sowwy again. Had to shut door. Weird thing happen in restaurant at night."

"Do I even want to know?" Dante asked.

"At night, Tsing Tsong the Singing Panda and his animal band come to life and try to stuff poor sucker working here into costumes. But costumes full of beam and wire, see?" There was an audible pounding on either side of him. "So if I get caught, they stuff me in suit and I die!"

"… Are you joking?" Dante asked.

"No! And they ferocious! There also Jun the jerboa and Jin the phesant! And then there's Quan the dhole, he rushes my door! He an asshole!"

"This is sounding disturbingly familiar," Dante said. "You should probably seek out another line of work."

"I know, wight? And I have to cook the food too! I need to carr my aunt Wing, she about to marry this white guy with multipre personarity disowder, and they gonna open up big Shitty Wok restaurant in Colorado-" he stopped then as Dante could barely make out the sound of the lights flickering off over his laughter before he realized the implications. "Son of bitch! Power went out!" And there was a few seconds of silence before the "Northeastern Cradle Song" could be heard in the background. "… Hey… Hey buddy…?" He asked.

"Yes?" Dante asked.

"Uhh… Wisten… I convert to Cwistianity when I come to America… I get to go to heaven, wight?"

Dante could have responded for hours on that subject and how incredibly multi-layered it was, but knowing what was about to happen, he just softly said, "Yes."

There came a scream, a struggle, and a disconnect of the phone. Dante hung up, frustrated.

"Another one?" Evie asked.

"Yeah," Dante said. "Julio Jalepeno's, Kosher Kyle's, Zeddie the Zebra's Ethiopian, and now Tsing Tsong the Singing Panda. Every one of them had killer animatronics in them. I seriously thought this was an isolated incident."

"Anywhere else you wanna look?" Evie asked, referring to the phone book.

"Yeah, I got an idea. Hand it over." It had been Dante's intention to call places that Freddy Fazbear's had marked as "Competitors" in order to further spite the restaurant, but apparently "competitor" referred to any of the surprising amount of restaurants with animatronics within, all of which seemed to be haunted. "It's gotta be in here. It's been there forever… I used to work there even! Here we go!" Dante dialed the number and waited, a gruff voice answering the phone shortly thereafter.

"Cheazy Pizza here. It's cheap, it's easy, it's cheazy. Can I help you?"

"Can I have a large pepperoni, garlic and mushroom delivered to Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria please?" Dante asked

"Wait… You're calling me from a pizzeria… To order a pizza?"

"It's a long story, see-"

"HEY TONY! YOU HEAR THAT?! WE'RE NOT THE WORST PIZZA IN TOWN ANYMORE!"

In the background, Dante could make out someone, maybe an older teenager yell back, "YOU GONNA START PAYING ME MORE THEN?"

"SHUT YOUR TRAP AND GET THAT PIE OUT THE DOOR! PEPPERONI, GARLIC AND MUSHROOM, AND MAKE SURE THERE ARE NO RATS IN THE DAMN SAUCE AGAIN!" He then returned to the phone and said, "Five bucks. Don't tip the delivery boy, he's a jackass."

"HEY SCREW YOU-"

Dante hung up the phone. "I haven't worked there in over forty years and it's still as crappy as ever. I can't believe their prices didn't even go up."

The father and daughter sat quietly against the back wall, Dante occasionally stopping to fiddle with the flashlight, but to his chagrin, it refused to operate. He checked the music box now and again, but wasn't even bothering to check for either of the Freddys. They would show up eventually, and, in his experience, Foxy was the only one of the animatronics who would attack immidietly upon entry. As long as they remained against the back wall, he was sure he'd have time to react.

Evie let out a yawn as she leaned in close to Dante. "I'm getting sleepy."

"Surprised it took you this long, dolly." Dante said. He pushed forward from the wall a little, slipped off his leather jacket and pulled it over her like a blanket. "Why don't you try and get a little sleep? Probably won't be long til I have to get back to it, but you can rest up a little."

Evie nuzzled into his chest and shut her eyes. "You make a good pillow, Dad."

"You're a pretty good sleeping buddy yourself," he said, resting one hand on her temple and gently running it through her hair before bowing and kissing her on the forehead.

The two got in about thirty minutes like that, Dante even managing to rest his eyes a little after a few attempts memorize where the charger on the music box was. For a little white, the two were almost able to forget the insanity of the night and just relax. Unfortunately, the sound of metal against the floor signaled that no good thing could last forever.

Between the metal scraping and the shape that covered the overhead light, Dante slowly opened his eyes to behold Toy Freddy, his black, bug-like eyes staring at him and appearing to extend his arm forward.

"Don't suppose I could convince you to just walk away," Dante remarked. "None of your other companions were that smart… Aren't you an entertainer or something, Fred? Isn't it your job to make kids happy? She looks awfully happy, doesn't she?"

As Toy Freddy continued to make his advance, in a move surprising for his after-hours self, he approached to get a better look at Evie, tucked under one of Dante's arms and pleasantly asleep. "I kinda hate sending her to school some days. Heck, it was really lonely for me the first night we put her in a crib. She can get hot headed like me, annoying like me… But she can be pretty open minded and well-meaning too, just like her mom. She even gave your last stupid restaurant a try, as crappy as that place was. She's a good girl, and if you pick a fight with me, you're going to regret it. Not just because I'll beat you to an unrecognizable pulp like I did the last one, but also because you'll have been a failure to her. Is that really what you want?"

Toy Freddy was so moved by this, he seemed almost reluctant when he took his first grab at Dante's bare black t-shirt. Their eyes met, the hesitation clear within Freddy's, confirming Dante's thoughts and analysis, but reassuring him the animatronic still had a job he intended to do.

"Alright. So be it." Dante said slowly.

Without further hesitation Dante thrust his head forward and grabbed Toy Freddy by the nose, tearing it off in one clean rip and clenching it in his teeth, producing a comical _honk _sound.

Toy Freddy was so thrown by this that Dante could get a few more reactions in before his response. First he firmly pulled Evie from his chest and set her, now barely awake, on the ground. Next, feeling a tear in his shirt as he stood up, he ripped it off entirely, cracking his knuckles as he stood against his foe. Toy Freddy himself seemed distracted by his surprisingly well-toned pecks and abs. "Not bad for an old man, huh?" He asked. And with that he began to pound into Toy Freddy's face with a barrage of boxing hooks and an occasional kick to his midsection. Toy Freddy offered him little more than an occasional block or grab as resistance, allowing Dante to stay totally on the offensive. After the nature of the first three encounters, particularly Foxy and Mangle, the singular Toy Freddy at first appeared to be a cinch.

Toy Freddy was forced backwards and forwards until he tripped on the still overturned desk, allowing Dante to close the distance with ease, grab him by the throat and threaten to cave in his neck. All was going smoothly until the light chime of "Pop Goes the Weasel" was audible behind him.

"Oh you gotta be kidding me!" He shouted. "I figured out where that button was! I kept on playing it! There's no way that bastard is getting in here that fast-"

Before he could say anything more, Dante was forced to jump backwards as the freakish Marionette rushed into the room, making its way to Toy Freddy's side thereafter. Evie pushed to her feet and handed Dante his jacket as they now stood squarely again, two against two. The four slowly sized each other within the devastated office, Dante bitterly noting he had crushed Toy Bonnie's guitar when he had flipped the table. The office was running out of resources to draw on, only the strange number of monitors and the overhead light seeming to remain… Those and the hollowed out Freddy head.

When Toy Freddy rushed at him again, Dante caught the monster's hands in his own, clenching the animatronic's fists and holding his stance. He only held the position for a few seconds before he saw the Puppet rushing towards Evie. Instantly, he released the grip and slid over to the Puppet, kicking it in the face and knocking it across the room. But with that attack in, Toy Freddy had time for his retaliation, grabbing Dante by his jacket and thrusting his face into the wall. Through an open eye Dante could see the Marionette recovering as Evie tried to stand her ground before he commanded, "Get behind the desk! I'll take care of that thing in a minute!"

Thrusting his elbow into Freddy's stomach, Dante rushed and tackled the Marionette, slamming his body onto the cold, hard ground and feeling insult added to injury. The Marionette's overly-wide smile only seemed to mock him as he wrapped his hands around the creature's throat, trying to crush something that, to his frustration, simply wasn't there. The Marionette's insides were completely hollow. Additionally, he noticed, this made the thing light as a feather, so in retaliation he grabbed ahold of its legs as he stood up and began bashing its form into the wall repeatedly until he saw Toy Freddy approaching Evie, at which point he tossed it into the darkened hallway. With the Marionette temporarily dealt with, he ran forward and delivered a dropkick to Toy Freddy's face, knocking him to the ground.

"Kiddo, I'm sorry but you gotta give Dad a hand," Dante said, trying to catch his breath. "That puppet thing weighs about as much as air, but something's gotta be really wrong with it. That thing's tried a lot harder than any of the rest of them were… I just need you to keep Freddy distracted for me, okay?"

"I can do that," Evie assured him. "And you can handle that thing!" Dante was about to thank his daughter for the reassurance when Toy Freddy grabbed him by his leg, appearing to snarl at him. "Mr. Fazbear, please leave my dad alone."

In an unprecedented move, Toy Freddy's face was notably softened by Evie's plea and released Dante's leg, pushing off the ground and looking at her, almost apologetically. Even Evie hadn't expected it would be this easy. "Wow… You really do like kids, huh?" She asked.

The Marionette came roaring back into the room, but this time around Dante caught it in midair, grabbing the sides of its mask firmly and trying to clutch them backwards, trying to snap it in two. The Marionette was, however, too strong even for his demonic force, and it raised its clawlike fingers and raked them against Dante's eyes, cause him to yell in pain as he threw the creature aside, clutching at the blood of his slashed eyelids. Even if they'd heal quickly, it still hurt like hell.

"One two thee four, I declare a thumb war. Five six seven eight, you'll be fish bait!" Evie declared as she took Toy Freddy's hand and began to thumb wrestle against him. Though his hands and fingers were far bulkier than hers, Toy Freddy went notably easy on her, and, after only a brief struggle she managed to catch his thumb underneath her own, declaring, "One two three! I win!" And upon releasing Toy Freddy's hand, he smiled and clapped for her.

Unlike any of the previous animatronic, the Marionette refused to be overcome. With every crash, smash and bash Dante put it through, the Marionette retaliated with increasingly bloody slashes through his face and chest. Streams like bloody tears ran down Dante's eyes as he tried to pin the abomination to the ground, but the Marionette only proved to be ridiculously flexible and wrapped its arms and legs tight around him like an anaconda, crushing and clawing at anything it could get its hands on. Dante went so far as to rush backwards into the monitors, which elicited terrible electric screeches, but the Marionette still would not let him be.

"I know my dad rips on your restaurant a lot. And a lot of it was kind of deserved… But what can you really expect? He's old. He probably liked a lot of things I would think were dumb when he was a little kid. I mean, he probably wouldn't have broken you guys if you would have just left him alone. He's a good guy, and I hate that you have all been trying to hurt him."

"EVIE!" Dante shouted in anger at the Marionette's resilience. "GOT ANY IDEAS?"

"Sorry Freddy, but he needs me," Evie said, pushing to her feet. "I'm coming Dad-"

Before she could even finish her call, Toy Freddy pushed her aside and grabbed ahold of the Marionette by the throat, yanking its entangled body off of Dante. The Marionette was clearly displeased by this, and began to fight and claw at Toy Freddy as fast and as hard as it could. As Toy Freddy fought and the father and daughter starred in disbelief, the Marionette claws and tore at his face, reducing him to metal endoskeleton before glaring right into his mechanical red eyes, letting out its horrible roar, and allowing Toy Freddy to fall onto his back, seemingly destroyed by the monster's cry.

In the tiny space before the Marionette turned its attention back towards Dante and Evie, Dante thrust the hollow Freddy head over the masked creature, trapping its entire flexible, slender body within. Dante pushed down on the head with all his might as the Marionette smashed against the head repeatedly before Dante realized that, with so little mass, the monster could barely push against his force. Experimenting for a moment, he found a single hand was enough to keep the creature from bursting out of the head.

"Freddy tried to save us," Evie said.

"I'm as shocked as you are," Dante gasped, wiping the blood from his face. "I don't even know what to do with this thing. Maybe we can just keep it here until sunrise. I dunno… At least we can finally catch our breaths again."

Dante heaved a sigh of relief, leaning onto the hollow head and trying to regain his composure. For the moment, he was sure, the fight was over.

"Heeeeeeeeeeyyyyyy buuuuuuddddddddddyyyyy… How aboot you let me out and we talk about this, eh'?"

Dante starred down at the Freddy head in disbelief. "No… Just… No."

"That's right," the seemingly randomly Canadian voice within the head said. "It's me."


	7. Chapter 7

If the situation was absurd before, The Marionette's request to be freed and distinct Canadian accent took the situation to levels even Dante was sure he had never seen before. "I just wanna talk to ya," The Marionette said. "Why don't we jus' talk? Like civilized people, eh?"

"Because I'm only a mostly civilized man and you're a demon possessed… Puppet… Thing!" Dante shouted.

"But I'm not possessed by a demon," The Marionette insisted. "My history is actually really sad and depressing, eh. If you knew where I came from, you'd sympathize with me."

"Pretty sure I wouldn't," Dante insisted.

"How will you know if you doon't try?" The Marionette asked, and as he did a drawer of the bleach cabinet across the room opened. "Look within."

Dante sighed, unsure of just why he was cooperating, and called, "Evie, hold this damn thing in place. He isn't very strong under the head, but we can't risk him getting out." Evie walked over and pushed down on the Freddy head as he walked over to the drawer and again found the video game console and the cartridges. "This is how you're going to explain this?" He asked, unamused. "What even is this thing… 'Fazstation 26'… That's a hundred times less than the most basic home game system they ever made, you know." As he continued to look over the console, he made a face of disgust. "What even is this? It functions on one of those damn screw in boxes where the power and AC hook into the same place? No. I'm not even doing this. You don't even have a screwdriver for this damn thing!"

The Marionette let out a sigh of its own as the monitor across the room began to fizzle with red static before it began to shine clear. "Stick in game noomber one." It commanded.

Dante slipped the game in and grabbed one of the joysticks, stopping to criticize the strange fact that the directions ascribed to the joystick wer and S before sitting on the floor in front of the monitor to play.

The primitive graphics of game one loaded, revealing, amongst the static, an eight bit Freddy Fazbear standing in a small building surrounded by children, one child waiting outside, the command, "Take cake to the children" atop the screen and some mechanical voice spelling out letters neither Dante nor Evie could discern.

"It all began in nineteen-eighty something." The Marionette said. "I was at a birthday party at everyone's favorite Canadian entertainment eatery, Fredbear's Family Diner."

"So this all began in Canada?" Dante retorted. "Suddenly this is starting to make a lot of sense."

"The birthday party was for the youngest kid on my mom's side of the family, and we were celebrating with the Pilgrims'-"

"Are we really doing this?" Dante sighed.

"What?"

"That thing where because this is set in Canada, that automatically means you're going to throw out references to characters and people who come from Canada because you for some reason think this needs to be more gratuitous than it already is."

"What are you talking aboot? I just mentioned the Pilgrims. You think I'm referencing someone famous? I don't have any famous relatives, eh. I just have the Careys, the Copelands, the Withoutabodys, the Biebers, the Protons, the Evans-"

"I am sorry I asked." Dante interrupted.

"Anyway, I went outside to try and get some fresh air, see? That's me, up by the street. I was feeling sick because I had too much poutine to eat earlier that day."

"Stop being so stereotypical," Dante retorted as he directed 'Fredbear' to the children whining for cake.

"But look up there! You see that car pulling up to me, eh?" The Marionette asked, as indeed a purple car and a purple man came into frame. "Watch this next part!"

As Fredbear began to move slower and slower, the purple man approached the child, whose eyes began to grow wider with fear and sobbings until he was rendered gray and lifeless. The children within the restaurant with red with anger as all seemed to stop for a moment before The Marrionette jumped forward on the screen and roared. Dante glared down at the Freddy head. "You mind not doing that? I got a kid here."

"I'm… Actually kinda jaded to it by now Dad," Evie replied.

"Alright, whatever. So, you were killed by a purple guy. Is that the end of the story?"

"Far from it! Put in game two!"

Dante complied for reasons he was still unsure of, and was presented with the image of an eight bit Foxy outside his curtain at Pirate's Cove and the instructions "Go! Go! Go!"

"These graphics suck," Evie remarked as Dante pushed Foxy around and into a room full of cheering children.

"These do. When was this thing even made?" He looked at the back of the joystick for a copyright date and made another disgusted face. "Nineteen eighty seven?! That was two years after those super plumber brothers and a year after the green-wearing elf guy! This is just disgraceful."

"What are you talking aboot? It's-"

"I don't even care," Dante said, walking into the room of children a second time as they all celebrated. When returned to Pirate's Cove a third time, he noticed a, or perhaps, _the_ purple man watching and smiling as Foxy ran.

"You see! There he is again! That same purple man showed up at the original Freddy Fazbear's Pizza!"

"I thought we were talking about Fredbear's diner or whatever," Dante said.

"We were. But after my murder, the original owners sold off the animatronics to the original Freddy's restaurant."

"You're telling me that you seriously think some random guy who murdered you at a Canadian entertainment restaurant, for some inexplicable reason, crossed country boundies just so he could go to a new party restaurant?"

"Just take a look in the next room!" The Marionette insisted and, indeed, upon entry, the children within now appeared dead. Dante and Evie only had a moment to ponder this before Foxy came lunging at the screen, a sight Dante and Evie were bored by at this point. Already knowing what he was in for, Dante stood up and replaced game two with game three.

Again Dante was in control of Freddy with no clear idea of what he was supposed to be doing. As he moved about, the mechanical voice droned on, though he wasn't giving it enough attention at this point to figure out what it was spelling. After a few rooms of searching, a sprite of The Marionette appeared and, unsure of what else to do, Dante followed it. After a few more rooms of wandering, a slender, purple figure with tiny pinprick eyes, a gaping smile and an outstretched hand approached Freddy, and the screen disappeared into blue static after he did.

"The purple man struck yet again, eh! And this time, it was in this restaurant! He followed us all the way here!"

"This is both the most obsessed and dumbest serial killer I've ever seen," Dante said, still not buying any of it. "Evie, I'll sit on the head now. Go put the fourth game in."

Evie did as she was told, the screen now presenting four children, sitting lifeless, and The Marionette in the center of them, along with the command, "Give Gifts" and another letter message. With increasing disinterest and disdain, Dante moved The Marionette between the four children, none of whom responded. The command then changed to, "Give Life". Rounding the four children again, masks of Freddy, Bonnie, Chica and Foxy were all placed on their heads before there came another roar Dante and Evie averted their eyes from out of fatigue of the concept.

"You see now! I am noot a monster! I am just a poor Canadian boy, and I linger within this restaurant because I was cruelly murdered by a purple madman intent on following me until the end of time, eh! In fact, he still works in this very pizzeria! Look!"

With another flash of static, the monitor again revealed the purple man from the third game and zoomed into him close, revealing a yellow security badge and another shape, like a crescent, in his hand. "The purple guy is still here! He works the day shift and leaves messages on the phone, eh!"

"So you can just cause screens to magically appear on this monitor?" Dante asked.

"Wha- Yes. Yes I can. Why?"

"Can I see one of those other screens with the purple guy?"

"Uhh… Sure." The screen flashed back to Pirate's Cove and the smiling purple man.

"No. Put them up side by side." The Marionette complied and Dante needed only study them for a moment to shout, "Those aren't even the same shades of purple! You gave your murderer one, _one_ defining trait, and you couldn't even keep that straight!"

"Um… But I-"

"And further more, are you colorblind?" Dante demanded.

"Am I what?"

"Are. You. Colorblind?" Dante asked.

"No! Of course I'm noot colorblind, eh!"

"You know what color my jacket is?"

"Red."

"Then what the hell do I have to do with any of this?!" Dante demanded, absolutely furious. "You built up this overblown vendetta against one child-murdering bastard, who you identify as "The Purple Guy", and then you bother with someone dressed all in red! What possible business do you have with me?! For what, tiniest iota of a conceivable purpose could you possibly justify you and your stupid animatronic friends trying to stuff me into a suit? On what alternate earth, in what parallel universe constructed by what drunk off his ass, stupid as hell deity whose parents probably let him eat too many paint chips as a child _does any of this make any sense_?!"

The Marionette sat under the head silent for over a minute, as if contemplating this question before he replied, "Screw it. I doon't need to take this, eh."

And with that there came a terrifying surge of dark energy from underneath the Freddy head, extending outwards to the fallen bodies of the animatronics Dante had slain. From a terrible, bubbling ooze on the ground rose a small army of shadowy creatures, one of every animatronic Dante had already defeated that night and, though he didn't notice it, another trail of darkness leading into the hall.

Dante and Evie were now surrounded on all sides by the shadowy abominations, glaring at the two and ready to strike them down at any moment. Evie immidietly retreated to Dante's side in fear. His face, in contrast, began to show a smirk.

"So, these are your companions? Fellow children murdered by the purple guy?" Dante asked.

"Yes! And they're all here to finally finish you off, Soon of Sparda!"

"Will everyone stop calling me that already?" Dante said, his smirk fading for a moment as Shadow Toy Bonnie and Shadow Foxy (still entangled with Mangle) made their way to them. He exchanged looks with every one of them, their eyes empty and shining bright white, their heinous smiles luminescent as they came closer. "Anyway hey, before you all try again to take a crack at me, I just had one more question."

"No!" The Marionette declared. "No more question-"

"If you all really are kids, trapped inside the bodies of stupid looking animals… Is that really what you want?" Shadow Toy Bonnie and Shadow Foxy stopped in their tracks and exchanged looks, Dante seeing Shadow Chica and Shadow Mangle seemingly doing the same. "C'mon you guys, is this really how you want to spend eternity? Trying to hunt down a killer? It's terrible that he got away, but what if you never find him again? What if he never comes back? Then you're stuck here waiting. Forever. Maybe you'll all get rebuilt again but so what? You kill a few more security guards and then someone like me comes along and you all get wasted again. What happens when this place runs out of money to keep rebuilding you? Are you still gonna be stuck here? You all surely have better things to do with your lives. I'm well aware there are at least two afterlives, so why don't you all move on and check those out already?"

The animatronics continued to exchange sad looks at one another, the two Shadow Chicas, formerly embittered enemies, even holding one another as they appeared to be sobbing. Shadow Foxy and Shadow Mangle wrapped their arms around one another's heads and appearing to nuzzle snouts. Shadow Toy Bonnie grabbed the top of his head and gruesomely snapped it in half, only to offer one half to Shadow Bonnie, who accepted it graciously as Shadow Sparky and Shadow Balloon Boy traded sparklers and balloons. The room was suddenly filled with a feeling of calm. Perhaps even peace.

"No! NO!" The Marionette roared.

"But hey, if you guys are still in the mood for vengeance," Dante began. "Who was it who trapped you in here for their own purposes? Who 'gave life' by stuffing your souls in a bunch of robots? Who is to blame for you still hanging out in this restaurant? I'll give you a hint." Dante lifted the Freddy head, produced The Marionette, and held it out for all of them to see. "It's not me."

With that Dante threw The Marionette into the crowd of shadowy creatures, their rage now renewed as they dragged it out into the hall.

"NO eh! No eh! NO! EH!" The Marionette cried as it was dragged into the darkness by the shadows as the rage of the children's spirits brutally eviscerated the puppet monster before, at long last, departing from the restaurant in a cloud of black smoke.

"Wow… That was crazy," Evie said. "I can't believe it actually worked."

"That stupid puppet was nothing more than a whining baby," Dante said, tussling his daughter's hair. "I know a thing or two about whining babies."

The two hugged close for a moment before Dante returned to the opposite side of the desk, picking up the tablet for one last look around. "Now maybe we can finally put this whole mess behind us-"

"DADDY!"

Dante whirled around immediately to be presented with one last sight. In the mere seconds it had taken him to turn around, one final animatronic had slipped into the room.

For most of his neck down, he was the rotting remains of the classic Freddy Fazbear. His right arm, however, was composed of pieces cannibalized from Bonnie and Chica, and the hook hand that it led into was certainly Foxy's. However, atop his neck sat the final terror: the melted, half-burned head of Golden Freddy, a single tiny, white, pinprick of an eye glaring from its left socket and in at Dante as if clutched the screaming Evie with its un-hooked hand.

"YOU HAVE CALLED OFF THE OTHERS, SON OF SPARDA," the hodge-podge Freddy mocked. "BUT I AM A DIFFERENT BEAST ENTIRELY!"

And with that the two vanished into the hall, Dante running to the threshold of the office, blood boiling and his nostrils on the verge of steaming as he screamed, "EVIE!" When he didn't hear a response he ran into the pitch-black hallway, so furious now he didn't even notice as his demonic power began to flash in and out of his body, bringing about his Devil Trigger without even being consciously aware of it.

"FREDDY! GET OUT HERE YOU MOTHERFUCKER!"


	8. Chapter 8

Dante continued through the darkened restaurant, only able to see by the flashes of his Devil Trigger as he continued to phase in and out, barely noticing as he did. "Freddy!" He continued to call, wandering in and out of the party rooms. "I know you're in here! Don't be a damn coward, get out here and face me! You're only making this harder on yourself!" Through the rooms he continued to search, eventually passing by the main Game Area, walking past a carrousel and tearing a "Happy Birthday!" banner down in sheer disgust.

He then arrived at the Prize Corner, where the Marionette had been kept at bay. He scanned through the area, identifying the music box he had been cranking attached to the wall and the gigantic present box the Marionette had slowly risen from, noting the top was still set aside.

Unsure of what else to do, since the room was a dead end, Dante leaned over the edge of the box and noticed a small sheet of paper within. After a little reaching, he got ahold of the paper, which read only, "IT'S ME".

Dante then felt a pain in the back of his head and he was yanked upward by his white hair, the horrible amalgamated Freddy then releasing its terrible screech right in his face.

Within a second, however, Freddy realized his was not the most frightening face in the room.

Dante's cold blue eyes, usually playful and entertained, were turned into the most rageful pair of ovals the creature had ever seen. He had not so much as blinked when Freddy unleashed his roar, remaining totally in place, his eyes and furious expression frozen and unmoving.

Before Freddy could do anything more, Dante let out a monstrous roar of his own and delivered a savage headbutt, instantly forcing him backwards, grabbed ahold of the back of the monster's head, and smashed him into the prize counter repeatedly, the hilarious _squeak_ sound of Freddy's nose colliding with the counter shattering the otherwise serious tone of the scene.

"Here's the deal, Fred," Dante said, his wrath building on itself, but his voice far too calm for comfort. "I am going to kill you. Nothing you say, nothing you do, nothing you ever have said, and nothing you ever could do, is going to change that." With that, he pulled Freddy's body off the ground, tossed it onto the counter, and ran him straight into the wall, face-first and tossing the many Freddy, Bonnie and Chica plushies every which way. "But here's the caveat… When you tell me where my daughter is, and I have her back safe, I'll put you out of your misery." Freddy moaned in agony. "Until then… One thing just has to be clear. You're. Not. Ready."

Dante then pulled Freddy's body off the counter and tossed him across the room, kicking him in his stomach until wires and metal shards seemed to be pouring out of the wound. As Dante stood over him, Freddy seeming to cringe and convulse as if he was wheezing, when he jumped up at him, digging Foxy's hook into Dante's cheek. The animatronic struggled to look up at Dante and his jaw dropped when he noticed that Dante's face remained static. Without so much as a change in expression, Dante tore the hook from his cheek and into his mouth, blood pouring down onto the hook as the slash quickly scabbed and healed.

"Can you do that?" Dante asked, and without waiting for a response, grabbed ahold of the upper half of Freddy's left snout, right where it connected to his nose, and ripped off the burnt plastic and fur. The creature roared in anguish as Dante smacked him upside the head with the bit he'd tore off before tossing it aside, leaning in and ripping off one of his ears with his teeth.

Freddy continued to howl with pain as Dante said, "You're bringing it on yourself, you stupid bastard!" And with that, he threw Freddy out into the game area.

Freddy pushed off the ground, shaking and struggling to push to his feet as he looked over at Dante as he rushed at him. He was too slow to react, and allowed Dante to deliver a front-snap kick, unbeknownst to Dante severing a few of the poorly-fused cables that kept Golden Freddy's head merged to Freddy's body.

Seeing a tiny opening, Freddy threw down his gaping maw towards Dante's face and viciously dug his teeth into his forehead, a fresh blast of blood pouring over the dried waterfalls the Marrionette had made.

And yet even now, Dante gave him nothing.

The demon slayer tore the monster from his head and again threw him aside, plucking a few of his teeth out and flicking them at him thereafter. "Here. These are yours." He said. Freddy was now leaned against the carousel, struggling to even stand up. "Let me make that easier on you."

Dante crossed the room and thrust his hand around Freddy's neck, lifting and smashing him into the ground in a violent chokeslam. Pressing his boot to Freddy's lower body, he gripped his left leg and, flying into his Devil Trigger for a moment and ripping it off completely, tossing it aside thereafter and doing likewise with the other. The beast roared as sparing wires poured out of the stumps. The maligned Freddy desperately clawed at the ground, trying to crawl away from his attacker, his cries now boarding on gargled.

"No," Dante muttered. "The idea was that you were supposed to stop trying to get away. Clearly I gotta go one step farther."

"WhAt ThE hElL aRe YoU- HoLy ShIt!" Freddy cried, upon getting a look at him again. In the few moments since tearing off his legs, Dante had grabbed ahold of one of the animals on the carrousel, ripped it from its place, and had the pole attached to the machine's roof in his hand. With a jump from the ride itself, he impaled Freddy through his chest, digging the pole down entire feet into the ground and trapping him in place.

As the monster cried out again, Dante grabbed him by his bowtie and lifted his burnt face to his own, "WHERE IS SHE?" He demanded.

"BuRn… In… HeLl…" Freddy managed.

"You first," Dante snarled, pushing off of him and stepping just out of sight. As Freddy struggled to raise his head, his already wide eyes seem to grow twice as large in utter terror. Allowing his Devil Trigger to take hold, Dante pulled and, within seconds, gouged the entire carrousel out of the floor, lifting it over his head and stepped in closer. His eyes burned red as fire as he glared down at Freddy, who at last cried.

"PaRtS aNd SeRvIcEs! ShE's AlIvE! I sWeAr!"

Dante held the glare for a few seconds more before he dropped the carrousel onto the lower-half of his body, trapping him under it with a thunderous crash, only barely overcome by the last guttural cry Freddy could give, trapping him underneath the ride.

Dante rushed to the parts and management room, yelling, "Evie?!"

"I'm in here, Daddy!" Evie cried from a closet across the room. Dante ran to it and tore it open, a Freddy suit falling out, blood and a pair of eyes spilling out of it. For a moment Dante cringed in horror before he looked up and saw a Chica costume in next to it. He pulled the head off of the costume, allowing Evie to gasp for air. "It's okay Dad!" She said, sweating but smiling. "I was too small for the suit to crush me!"

Dante threw his arms around her and hugged her close, muttering, "I'm not letting you out of my sight again until you can kill these bastards yourself," he said, kissing her head over and over before he took her hand and said, "I took down the last one. I'm sorry we wasted so much time in here, let's find the exit and get the hell out-"

There came a last monstrous roar as Golden Freddy's head came flying through the hallway at them. Without missing a beat, Dante slammed the door shut and he painfully impacted against it with a _slam_. After waiting a moment, Dante opened the door again and grabbed ahold of the head, raising him to his own eye level. "You wanna bother explaining what all this garbage is now?" He asked. "Care to explain who that guy was?" He continued referring to the bloody Freddy costume. "Or what the hell _any_ of this was?"

Golden Freddy's head stared at him, shaking in fear for a few moments before replying, "THAT… IS MARCUS HABEAR. HE LEFT YOU THE MESSAGE… HE AND A MAN NAMED JOHN FAZINGTON RUN THIS SHITHOLE… I MEAN… IN ADDITION TO ME?"

"You run this place now?" Dante asked, disgusted. "Could have mentioned _that_ last time."

"YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME A CHANCE!" Golden Freddy's head insisted.

"Who… And what… Even are you?" Dante asked. "What is _any_ of this crap?"

"… MY MORTAL NAME WAS FREDRICK, AND I WAS A FAT GUY WHO LIVED IN THE FORESTS OF RURAL CANADA. THEY CALLED ME FREDRICK THE BEAR, BECAUSE I SHIT IN THE WOODS."

"Making sense so far," Dante said under his breath. "Except that you clearly don't have a Canadian accent."

"THE CANADIAN ACCENT ISN'T EVEN A REAL THING! IT WAS A SPEAKING STYLE TAUGHT TO PEOPLE OF NEWCASTER DESCENT SO THAT THE REST OF US WOULDN'T BE THE LOWEST HEAD ON THE TOTEM POLE OF NATIONAL MOCKERY!"

"… That makes a surprising amount of sense."

"AS FREDICK, I DIED OF WHAT SCIENTISTS WOULD LATER REFER TO AS A 'CORONARY' AND WAS DAMNED TO HELL FOR GLUTTONY. I SOUGHT THE POWER TO RETURN TO THE PHYSICAL WORLD, AND I SET OUT TO DAMN AS MANY CHILDREN AS I COULD TO MY SAME CRUEL FATE, BY USING MY INFLUENCE TO BUILD THE ORIGINAL FREDBEAR'S FAMILY DINER. IT SOUNDED SO PERFECT, SO MANY PEOPLE FALLING VICTIM TO SINS OF EVIL AND GLUTTONY!"

"And let me guess-"

"IT WAS TAKING TOO DAMN LONG! SO I SAID SCREW IT, AND KILLED A PARTICULARLY WHINY CHILD, WHOSE SPIRIT I COULD TAKE IN AS MY APPRENTICE, MAKING UP STUPID STORIES ABOUT SOME PURPLE GUY TO KEEP HIM ON MY SIDE, AS WE STUFFED CHILDREN AND SECURITY GUARDS INTO SUITS OVER AND OVER AGAIN! IT WAS ALL GOING SO WELL… UNTIL YOU SHOWED UP AND WRECKED THE ORIGINAL FREDDY FAZBEAR'S!"

"Yeah, what a shame," Dante retorted. "You weren't even appealing to your own demographic, right Evie?"

"Yeah… Your place kind of sucked," she said.

"I HAD NO IDEA WHO YOU WERE AT THE TIME, OTHERWISE I WOULD HAVE TAKEN YOU MORE SERIOUSLY… I GAVE JOHN FAZINGTON A LOTTERY TICKET TO BUILD A NEW RESTAURANT AND SACRIFICE EVEN MORE SOULS, THINKING I COULD SLAY YOU THEN… BUT I SUPPOSE YOU SIMPLY CANNOT BE DEFEATED… SON OF SPARDA."

"Alright, that's it!" Dante yelled, tossing Golden Freddy's head and punting it across the service room. "I'm sick of this Son of Sparda crap! From every last one of you! You know what my name is?"

"WHA… YES… YOU SAID IT LAST TIME WE MET…"

"Then say it!" Dante commanded, closing in on Golden Freddy's head and cracking his knuckles threateningly.

"BUT… BUT WHY IS IT SUCH A-"

"SAY. MY. NAME!"

What came out of Golden Freddy's mouth, Dante was unprepared for, even after everything he had been through that night. There was no logical explanation, and thus, only illogical ones remained.

"VERGIL!"

Dante stared at him, dumbstruck and said, "What? No! Vergil is my brother's name, you moron!"

"WHA… WHAT?!" Golden Freddy cried. "THERE ARE TWO SONS OF SPARDA?!"

"I mean, there were," Dante said. "But he's dead. Has been for decades now. Why do you even know that name?"

"THAT WAS WHAT YOU SAID YOUR NAME WAS!"

"No," Dante said firmly. "I didn't even mention my brother's name last time."

"YOU SAID YOUR NAME WAS VERGIL! IT'S ON THE CAMCORDER IN THE LOWER COMPARTMENT OF THAT CABINET BACK IN THE OFFICE!"

Dante gave another confused look before he motioned to Evie to come back with him to the office as he dragged Golden Freddy's head along with him and tossed it into the wall when they arrived, opening the previously ignored lower shelf and discovering the foretold camcorder. With a moment of hesitation, he flicked it on.

"What's crackalackin' you putts and punks?" A teenager garbed in the most tacky of 1980's clothes, including a half-buttoned denim shirt and silvery, clinging pants asked the camera, his bright, sunglasses and white hair tossed back into a mullet, a sheathed katana at his side. "The year is 1985, I broke some of their bootleg junk and now I'm workin' off the damages… And the robots are all trying to kill me. If you're asking yourself, 'What you talkin' about Willis?', let me introduce you, one and all, to the greatest hidden camera death movie since _Cannibal Holocaust_. This… Is Vergil's Night at Freddy's!"

In disbelief, Dante fast-forwarded through the tape as fast as he could, watching as his unbelievably 80's dressed brother slashed off Bonnie's hands, followed by his head and bashed Chica with the sword's handle before sending several summoned blades through her top half. When Foxy ran in he slashed off his hook and rammed his sword through the pirate's chest, and proceeded to hack off one of Freddy's arms, behead him and rips his head into nothingness with a judgment cut. By the time Golden Freddy arrived, Vergil had already lined the whole place with gasoline, set it aflame, and burned the restaurant to the ground, just to laugh at it when it was all over.

Dante slowly looked away from the camcorder and turned to Golden Freddy's head, now shaking as the revelation slowly washed over him.

"… What year is it?" Dante asked, anger slowly boiling within him.

"NINETEEN-EIGHTY SEVEN. WHY?"

The demon hunter again began to quiver in confusion and rage. Slowly but surely, he began to quietly laugh, which built up as he took the situation in deeper and deeper until he was letting out a round of laughs that made even Evie a little uncomfortable.

"Nineteen-eighty… Nineteen… Nineteen-eighty… Nineteen-eighty seven… NINETEEN. EIGHTY. SEVEN!" He yelled, his laughter dissipating. "YOU ROTTEN BASTARDS, I'M IN A PREQUEL! My brother killed all you sorry jackasses in incredibly similar, contrived ways as me, somehow I got sent back in time… AND I'M IN A PREQUEL! THE ONLY THING WORSE THAN A SEQUEL!" Dante fumed, putting his fist through one of the walls in his rage. "Did you do this?" He demanded.

"Dad?" Evie asked nervously.

"DID I DO WHAT?" Golden Freddy's head asked.

"Did you. For some ungodly reason. Send me back in time?"

"You're back in time?"

"ARGH!" Dante yelled, holding his forehead. "I wanna know! I wanna know whose stupid idea this thing was! I _demand_ to know whose stupid twist this was! NOW!" When an awkward silence followed, he added, "I CAN WAIT!"

There was time enough for a sigh, a moment of contemplation, and the brief dialing of a phone number. Shortly thereafter, the phone, still sitting on the ground, began to ring. Dante and Evie starred at it as it did so, as if unsure of what to make of it before Dante slowly approached it, picked up the receiver and asked, "What?"

"Please don't yell…" I requested.

"Who the hell is this?"

"This is Michael Joseph Tharnish Roby… MJTR for short… And I wrote the twist."


	9. Chapter 9

"You wrote… The twist?" Dante asked, hinging somewhere between more anger and existential confusion.

"Yeah… I mean, it didn't come _completely _out of nowhere. Scott Cawthon kinda set it up first." I said.

"Who the hell is Scott Cawthon?"

"He's this Christian video game developer from Texas who kinda lost his mind and started making horror... From what I've heard he's a super-nice guy. I mean 'lost his mind' in like, the best way I can possibly mean it… Look, that's not important," I sighed. "You demanded an answer, I thought it was fair to give you one."

"So what, you… I dunno, _wrote _me into this situation?" Dante asked in disgust. "So it's _you_ I should be furious at!"

"Well, yeah, in the same way that you should be mad at Hideki Kamiya for killing your mom I guess. Hell, I didn't even do that!"

"Yeah? When'd you start writing my life?"

"After that whole mess and Dumary that everyone hated but I kind of had a soft-spot for… And I wrote in where your angst came from-"

"Oh that's great!" Dante shouted. "So I can blame you for killing Trish and Lady!"

"Come on man, I had to say your angst came from _somewhere_," I argued. "It's not like you were sad because your goldfish ran away or something when Devil May Cry 2 got started, it had to be… Look, I'm actually not even gonna touch that one. I don't think a lot of the readers here have even read Revelations, that wouldn't be fair."

"What about that cool chick from Argentina who keeps leaves positive reviews on like, every one of my stories you write?"

"As happy as I am to always see stuff from her… Wait, why do you even know who that is? A minute ago you weren't even aware you were a character in a fan fiction."

"Why don't you tell me, smartass writer guy?" Dante retorted.

"… Well mild confusion aside I'm trying to be open here. It's a continuation of Revelations, not a sequel. You don't have to know one to know the other."

"Except for the multiple times I've mentioned 'Mundus's bastard son'." Dante pointed out.

"That builds on lore! That's totally different!" I said.

"Uh huh. How about the gratuitous moments I referenced or was hanging out with Hellboy?"

"Damn it! Don't say his name! I'm trying to maintain a sense of original flavor-"

"Original flavor? What does that even mean?" He was growing angry again.

"It means that I am trying to maintain a consistent mood and style like the one from you and Freddy's material… Including that naming pop-culture characters would be problematic if an actual crossover were actually to happen and saying that you were flat out in the same continuity would probably get someone sued."

"Or you're just building up that crossover we're supposed to have that you keep putting off," Dante said wryly.

"Hellboys will come when it comes!"

"That is the least inventive title for a story I've heard since you proposed that crossover with Batman you wanted to call, 'The Dark Knights'."

"That one is clever as hell!" I insisted. "You have the title of dark knight, he has the title of dark knight, it's perfect!"

"It's lazy," Dante continued to criticize.

"Yeah well who asked you?" I said. "I'll deal with you and that crossover later… I gotta finish _Angel_ first."

"Oh that's just pathetic."

"What?"

"You are shamelessly self-promoting another story in the middle of this one. Hell, you've self-promoted two other stories and hinted at two more, you self-important jackass!"

"At least I'm giving you the time of day. Korra and Aang have been stuffed in my back pocket, I haven't updated _Book of Time_ in months."

"You… You just did it again!" Dante yelled in disbelief. "Acknowledging you're doing something does not excuse you from doing it!"

"Yeah, but through you, I'm _acknowledging_ that I'm acknowledging that I'm doing it, so it all evens out." I said proudly.

"No! No it doesn't!" Dante said, seemingly reaching his wit's end. "And speaking of time, what's your pathetic excuse for how I got back to 1987 in the first place?"

"Okay, you're never gonna believe this, but it was foreshadowed." I said. "This plot point actually had a fantastic set up."

"I can't wait to hear it," Dante said sarcastically.

"Okay, see back in chapter one-"

"Michael! Where's the bottle opener at?"

"Hang on," I sighed. "Why would I know that?"

"I just wanted to know if you'd seen it on the counter or something… Are you talking to yourself again in there?"

"No! I'm talking with one of my characters!"

"Oh my God, are you trying to write one of those weird, too artsy for its own good things again?"

"… Maybe!"

"You seriously have too much free time."

"Yeah well you hate _Highlander_! One of the greatest movies of all time and you hate it! We can criticize each other all day, but you still hate _Highlander_!"

"It was a bad movie!"

I got back on the phone. "Sorry. Girlfriend."

"She hates _Highlander_?" Dante asked.

"Yep."

"How can you hate _Highlander_?"

"I know, right? Freaking awesome movie! Love it, love every single minute of it!" I gushed.

"Did you show her one of the sequels by accident?" Dante asked.

"I don't even own the sequels… Except for _Search for Vengeance_."

"What's _Search for Vengeance_?"

"It's an anime movie. It's got some of that _Quickening_ feel with the post-apocalyptic future and that… It's actually a lot better than it sounds, I'm seriously not doing it justice with words."

"Huh… Might have to check that out… What were we talking about again… Oh right! Why the hell am I back in time?!"

"Okay, you remember back in chapter one when you and Hellboy were in that bar and he mentioned fighting the Titans of Greek mythology…? He specifically mentioned Cronos! The Greek titan of time! Cronos put a curse on Hellboy, swore to kill his friends, and he sent that taxi-cab driver, sent by Fazington, Habear and Golden Freddy to swing by a bar that your brother was at that night, to pick you up instead and take you back to '87 before he even noticed he'd been sent forwards in time. See?"

At this point, Dante's palm was in his face. "That is… That's not even foreshadowing! That's dropping the tiniest hint of an Easter egg and pretending it was well thought out! Besides, we were born in 1968. Vergil would be too young to be at a bar."

"Except that you two lived right around the Washington-Idaho boarder at the time, and in the first third of 1987, the drinking age in Idaho was 19!" I said, again pleased with my answer.

"It's like for every answer you come up with, two more take its place," Dante said, dumbstruck. "By the way, nice work ruining the illusion of where I live."

"Entia is in Washington! Entia was _always_ in Washington!" I asserted. "Just like Venna was _always _in California, and Dumary was _always _in Massachusetts! I planned all this stuff a long time ago, I just forgot to stick it in the writing notes back in Revelations."

"Uh huh. Sure you did," Dante said, unamused. "Look, even in the twisted sense that this was, indeed, a foreshadowed twist, it's still not a _good_ twist! Nothing was added to this story as a result of it, and if the original is somehow still in continuity after this, then this entire venture was completely pointless!"

"… I wouldn't say completely…" I said. "I got to reference some 80's songs… Um… It kept in line with the real Five Nights at Freddy's 2… Stiff, uptight, stick up his ass Vergil as an 80's fashion victim! Come on, you gotta admit, that one was funny!"

"… Alright, yeah. That one was kind of funny."

"Not to mention all those totally insane references the Marionette made weren't just obnoxious. Scott Pilgrim, Jim Carrey, Edge, Manwithoutabody, Justin Bieber and Protonjon legitimately weren't recognizable people back in '87! And why would he know Captain Canuck's secret identity? That's not public knowledge."

"That was still a stupid joke. I'm not giving you any points for that one."

"Yeah, whatever." I sighed again.

"And this is still a stupid twist. In fact, as soon as I get out of here, I'm gonna find you and I'm gonna kick your ass for this!"

"Good luck. 1987 is a whole six years before I was born! I don't even know how I'm talking on the phone with you right now. It's probably gonna make my brain hurt if I linger on it too much…"

"Then I'll do it when I get back to my own time." Dante asserted.

"You don't want this man, I'm a former creepypasta writer. I can go 'It's Just a Story' on your sorry ass!"

"And now you're shamelessly self-promoting yourself again!"

"I don't know what you're talking about… I wish I would have recorded this whole conversation, then I could post it to my YouTube channel, HalfwayBeretProductions, where I do other funny stuff like make audiobooks and-"

"Words cannot express how far you're pushing me!" Dante yelled. "At least… Not in a teen rated story…"

"Yeah? Well to be frank I'm getting sick of not cursing at you too! So why don't I go make an M-rated extra chapter as its own story and we can settle this there!"

"Challenge accepted, considering I'm from an M-rated series anyway!"

"No game you were ever in deserved an M rating," I insisted, as we continued to argue back and forth in a conversation that would be resolved elsewhere.

What Dante hadn't noticed (and Evie had been too distracted by the call to see), was that Golden Freddy had, at some point, spawned a shadowy body for itself and, as soon as the clock hit six AM, he had rushed out the door, running as fast as he possibly could out into the streets, the sun just barely coming up over the horizon.

"I GOTTA FIND SOMEWHERE TO RUN… THERE'S GOTTA BE SOMEWHERE I CAN HIDE TIL I CAN GET BACK ON MY FEET… TSING TSONG IS A FELLOW BEAR! HE'LL SURELY SUPPORT ME! THEN I CAN SURELY-"

In the midst of talking to himself, a car smashed into Golden Freddy, tossing him through the street as he groaned in pain and the driver groaned in frustration.

"Aw man… You gotta be kidding me…" The driver muttered. "Please be a deer, please be a deer, please be a deer…" He stepped out of the car and slowly approached Golden Freddy, asking, "Hey… Man… Are you alright-"

Golden Freddy again threw up his head and let out his terrible screech.

And the driver hacked a claymore into Golden Freddy's head, followed by several rounds of gunshots.

Golden Freddy got a very brief look at the guy driving the car and beheld a white-haired teenager in a _Cheazy Pizza_ delivery uniform, huffing and puffing as he drove the sword into his face again and finished off the last of Fazbear's lingering spirits.

Disgusted, tired and unsure what to make of what had just happened, the delivery boy got back in his car, trying to shake the experience and knocked on the back door of Freddy Fazbear's Pizza.

When Dante answered the door, he couldn't help but stare in disbelief, an action that, for a moment, the delivery boy emulated before he said, "Uhh… One large pepperoni, mushroom and garlic pizza…" Wordlessly, Dante produced his wallet and handed the delivery boy a five, considering handing him more before he put the wallet away. "Um… Hey… The name 'Sparda' doesn't mean anything to you, does it?" The kid asked.

"… Nope. Fraid not," Dante replied.

"Huh… Okay. Goodbye then," the kid said.

Dante continued to stare as the kid as he walked back to his car, until he finally yelled, "Hey, kid!"

"Yeah?" The delivery boy asked, as if gratified he'd gotten a response.

"Hey… Uh… Listen…" Dante began. A million thoughts were running through his head, he was unsure which one to use… Though one in particular stood out. The response he remembered. But did he really want to say that? Did he really want to not take the opportunity to warn the kid? Had he no wisdom to impart to him? Or was he just going to recite the same stupid joke he'd heard years ago and throw the opportunity away.

"… Your pizza car… It's a pizza crap."

The kid laughed in anger and disgust, yelling back, "Never heard that one before!" And kicked his car before driving off to quit his job and begin pursuing a career as a paranormal mercenary.

"Why did you say that Daddy?" Evie asked. "That was mean."

"Because if I didn't say it, in some weird, round-about way, you probably would never be born." Dante sighed. "Well, great. We have our pizza. We killed the animatronics… Now we just need a way to get home… And I have no idea how."

"Hey! Most righteous demon slayer man!"

Dante and Evie turned to their right, seeing two teenagers, one with black hair and the other with curly blondes, stepping out of a telephone booth that had seemingly come from nowhere. "You're Dante, right?" The excited blonde asked.

"Uhh… Yes." He replied.

"Truly excellent!" The dark haired one said. "We were just in the year 2015 to see if the fantastic movie _Back to the Future II _was accurate in its portrayal of the greatness of the future was true… We were most disappointed… But we read a truly hilarious tale where you beat up some animatronic dudes, and since you were stuck in the past, we decided to help you out!"

"But… But how could you even know we were here?" Dante asked, altogether questioning yet another gratuitous crossover more than he should have been. "Assuming you haven't taken us back yet, that would mean the part where you take us back wouldn't be written yet."

"It was easy slayer dude," the curly one replied. "We guessed the twist."

"You… What?" Dante asked flatly.

"Yeah dude, we guessed the twist. First chapter. A truly entertaining story anyway, but we knew it was coming!"

Dante exchanged looks with the two and Evie before letting out a sigh, stepping into the telephone booth and resigning to the sheer idiocy. "Whatever. Please just take us home."

…

[[Animatronic Boogaloo: The Uncut Conversation will be released to the crossover section before the next and final chapter]]


	10. What in God's Name Just Happened?

[[A reminder: You can check out _Animatronic Boogaloo: The Uncut Conversation_ on my stories page!]]

Dante awoke the next morning to the sound of Evie's alarm clock in the next room. He let out a yawn as he pushed out of bed and stretched, noting Lucia was already up and, from the sounds of things, already in the kitchen. He slid on a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt and went to the kitchen to join her, grabbing the morning paper off the counter and pouring himself a cup of coffee.

"You know I was thinking about how you scolded me last night and… You're probably right," Dante admitted with a sigh as he sifted through the newspaper. "I probably could afford to do more wholesome stuff with the kids once in a while."

"You mean that?" Lucia asked, somewhat suspicious.

"Yeah. I'm sorry for the complaining and bringing along Evie where she doesn't need to be and all that. Maybe we can go to the zoo or something this weekend. Just the four of us."

"Well well well, I don't think I've heard you say anything that mature in a while," Lucia chuckled. "Artie will like that… Evie will too, of course. That sounds like a lot of fun. How do you want your eggs?"

"I'll have them-" Dante froze mid-sentence, staring intently at the page of the newspaper he had turned to.

"Dante?" Lucia asked, then turning around and repeating, "Dante?" When he still didn't respond, she looked down at the newspaper he was holding.

_Local Pizzeria Reborn as Horror Attraction._

_After a series of what are still being argued were potentially supernatural occurrences as local entertainment restaurant Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, the eateria closed its doors for the last time when its trademark animatronic machines were destroyed by, according to the restaurant's aging owner John Fazington, "A very disgruntled security officer with white hair." Mysteriously enough, this is the second time the company has given this reason for shutdown, the first being the original Freddy Fazbear's Pizza in 1985, and the shutdown of a second location after a string of murders and another instance of destroyed property in 1987._

_The old Pizzeria was sold to Lawrence Fazington, John's son who says he has "Always loved the animatronics, and I would really hate to see them forgotten."_

_The new location, however, is stated to be redesigned as a haunted house of sorts, based on an idea Lawrence had as a child.  
>"After the second Freddy's closed down, my dad brought this old video camera home. He had no idea where it came from, but at had this short film on it called, 'Vergil's Night at Freddy's,' that was setup like something that couldn't decide whether it was supposed to be funny or scary. The guy, a security guard at the time, claimed the animatronics were trying to kill him, and I always thought that would be a fun twist to put on the restaurant."<em>

_Lawrence Fazington went on to say, "It was really weird that that old video camera was just sitting around in there. It might have been in one of the filing cabinets, but if it was someone clearly took it out and forgot to put it away. That's amazing luck right there, because I probably would have never gotten the idea if I hadn't seen that tape back in '87."_

_The new haunted attraction will be opening at the end of the month. Time will tell if this will be a successful resurrection and golden age for the seemingly defeated Fazbear Entertainment._

…

Dante, Evie and the Fazbear Animatronics will return in Dante's 3 Freddy: The Rise of the Return of the Quicken-

Before the phrase could be completed, Dante grabbed a firm hold on the ending credits message and tore it away, screaming, "NOOOOOOOO! EVIE!"

"I'm just putting my shoes on, Daddy!" she called.

"Good!" He replied. "Because we have business to take care of!" And with that he pushed up from the dinner table and stormed into the basement, Lucia watching him, confused.

"Business to take care of? It's a school day!" She argued as Dante reached the top of the staircase, strapping Rebellion, Ivory and Ebony to his jacket.

"We have something personal to go settle," Dante replied.

"You're taking her out for _another_ hunt?" Lucia demanded. "Do you know what I have to deal with when I go to her parent-teacher conferences? The teachers want to know where you keep taking her and why she misses so much school!"

"Lucy, baby, I promise, this one's personal," Dante assured her. "And honestly? Just tell them the truth. I mean, why not?"

"I think our daughter has enough trouble getting along with other kids in school without them knowing she's from a family of demon hunters," Lucia retorted.

"It's how I got by," Dante replied.

"But shouldn't you want better for your kids?"

"Lucia, hon, darling, I promise, this one's different," Dante said. "And frankly, I'll start going to her parent-teacher conferences. It'll be fine. And we'll still go to the zoo this weekend. And you know what else? I'll handle dinner tonight, no worries. You wanna do chicken fettuccini? I'm thinking chicken fettuccini. EVIE! You ready yet?"

Evie stepped out into the kitchen and looked between her parents, "What is it Dad?" she asked.

"Unfinished business. C'mon, we'll get breakfast on our way home." Dante kissed Lucia's cheek as she sighed in exasperation. "See you tonight honey! We love you!"

Dante led Evie right to his car and sped through town, making his way to the interstate.

"Is this about last night?" Evie asked. "Or… 1987? I'm still not clear on exactly what happened-"

"It was really confusing. And existential. And frankly unnecessary," Dante retorted. "We're ending this. Once and for all. I'm armed this time around."

After about forty minutes on the road, Dante led Evie out of the car to the dilapidated building he'd taken her to for her birthday. Where his place in the story had all begun. Moving men and construction workers were moving in and out of the wreck, motioning and yelling to one another. As Dante stormed out of the car and led Evie to the building, ignoring the employee who told him to stop and that he couldn't enter yet.

"You guys should probably get out of here," Dante said, making his way into the main foyer of the former restaurant. As the employees struggled to stop him, Dante tore through every room of the former pizzeria, and immidietly upon encountering the head of Foxy with light-up eyes, stuck into the wall like some kind of trophy, drew his pistols and began firing. Employees screamed and began running from the restaurant, though he paid them no mind, blowing the Foxy head to pieces before moving on to another room and finding Chica in a similar arrangement.

"Here," he said, handing the guns off to Evie. "It wouldn't be fair for me to take them all to myself."

For a little girl, Evie was a masterful shot and managed to tear through the mounted head with the demonically charged pistols rather quickly. Patting his daughter on the back, he continued to scour the haunted house until he came to what he recognized as the security office. Upon stepping in, he instantly recognized a box of the beaten, broken remains of the toy animatronics. Drawing Rebellion from his back, he began to hack and slash at them until each and every one of their heads and props was reduced to a fine dust. As he did, he paused briefly, sure he could hear a voice speaking to him.

"I remain…"

Dante and Evie paid it no mind as they tore down the multiple "Fazbear's Fright" posters all around the office.

"I am still here…"

Dante again overturned the desk and took pistol shots at anything remotely questionable he could see, including the plushies sitting in the corner.

"I will always be here…"

It was at this point that Dante stopped, his back to the hallway on his left, and kept a grip on Rebellion, only watching Evie as she stomped on Balloon Boy's head. He was ready for whatever was coming.

"I will come back… I ALWAYS DO!"

Dante felt the hand on his shoulder and a distorted hissing sound from behind him. Without even a blink, he whirled around and thrust Rebellion into the face of his attacker.

Blood and brains splashed onto his jacket as he came face to face with another hodge-podge monstrosity. Though its body was surely a stitched, destroyed version of Bonnie's, the tattered, golden fur brought the pizzeria's greatest beast to mind. Its eyes were wide open, now not pinpricks, but large, disturbingly human ocular orbs. The vile thing frowned as best it could with its exposed, Glasgow smile, as Dante kicked it in the gut, knowing it to the ground as it continued to hiss and gargle.

"You could have messed with a lot of the wrong people," Dante said coldly. "My buddy HB, that blonde, bisexual British guy, those good looking brother punks and their guardian angel, that vampire with the cool glasses… But no. You chose to mess with me." He then tossed Ivory over to his daughter as the two stood over the last of the misshapen beasts yet again, surely for the last time. "Because I love what I do. I've done it before, and I'll do it a thousand times more before I die. But I'm done playing this game with you. It's time to cash out. When you fight me, you only get three sevens one time."

Evie took her place by her father's side, both of the guns coursing with their energy as their gold foe struggled to even get back up. The two responded to him simply and simultaneously.

"Jackpot."

The ensuing blast blew the creature's head into nothing but a pool of blood on the ground as it let out a final, ghastly hiss and Evie handed Ivory back to her father. "Go wait in the car, kiddo," Dante said. "Only one more thing to do."

Evie nodded and ran out of the unfinished attraction, rushing into the parking lot full of confused workers and standing by her father's car. Within the former pizzeria, Dante began to pool all of his strength into the center of his body until a blood red aura began to surround him, electricity flickering off his being and intention clear in his mind.

The ensuing flux of demonic energy burned the building until nothing was left standing. Every particle of what had been Freddy Fazbear's Pizza was destroyed in a massive, demonic blast, until only a crater sat in the center of the lot, everyone staring at him with horror and confusion.

Without a word of acknowledgement to any of them, Dante put his weapons back in place, walked up to his daughter and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. "Let's go get some breakfast."

It ended with Bloody Mary's and waffles.

The end.

…

_MJTR… What… What in God's name just happened?_

I knew right from the get go I didn't want to tell the same story twice.

I'd been toying around with writing some kind of epilogue to "Dante's Night at Freddy's" that involved Evie being captured too, maybe some kind of "4/20 Mode" night or something. I like writing for little kid characters like Evie (even if I don't do it much) and wanted to see her and Dante interact in some funny, father-daughter ways. But then Scott set all my worries away when he confirmed _Five Nights 2_. Instantly after the first images started going up I began to devise how I could do a sequel. The sequel hook in the first story was even written before we knew everything that was going on _Five Nights 2_, I was just so hyped.

… Aaaaaaaaaand then it turned out to be a prequel at the very end.

I was blown away by the twist not only because I think it is a good one, but also because I felt like it ruined my plans for _Animatronic Boogaloo_. I had already been planning out the kills and storyline, and the prequel aspect really threw me for a loop. I didn't know what to do with it.

The more I thought about it, the more I felt the perfect answer would be, "Screw it. We're going balls to the wall stupid on this one." Actually, if you look back at the sequel hook, you will notice that it does fit neatly into the years 1985-1987. Fazington doesn't make any explicit references to modern things, they never call Dante (or rather, Vergil) by name etc. It wasn't PLANNED that way, but it was a really happy little accident, so much so that I managed to turn "Son of Sparda" into a running gag and even a plot point in this one.

Writing this story really felt like the shift in tone from _No More Heroes_ to _No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle_. The two games have nearly identical gameplay and mostly the same mechanics, but _Desperate Struggle_ was somehow even more off the wall than the original. In my opinion, when _Animatronic Boogaloo_ is dumber and sillier than the original, it is MUCH dumber and sillier. When it gets kinda serious, it is handled a lot more heavily than in the first. Hell, even the mood whiplash feels more insane in this one. One moment Dante and Evie are having a sweet, cuddly dad and daughter moment, the next Dante rips off Toy Freddy's nose with his teeth. And don't even get me started on all the references I got to drop this time around. Dropping little Easter Eggs and that kinda stuff is one of my favorite things to do. (Did you catch all the Let's Players? Recognize every Canadian? How about every monster hunter Dante mentions? Or just about _anything_ over the course of the incredibly meta phone call). If the first story set out to be a cure for Freddy nightmares, this one's sole intention was to just plain be batshit.

With that said, it does kinda start like it's going to be more of the same, but I think that kinda dissipated after Sparky showed up. The Chicas and Bonnies got what they did simply because I didn't feel like they had any really great gimmicks to work off of. Not to say they aren't special in their own ways, Scott calls Bonnie the scariest to him and I find Chica the scariest in the group, but they just didn't give me quite enough to work with compared to the insanity that ensues later.

To talk more on that, holy shit did _Five Nights 2_ have some amazingly happy coincidences. Bonnie's face is torn off? That's great! I tore it to pieces too! Chica's arms are ripped at the wrist? Awesome! Because Dante ripped on those a royal ton! Golden Freddy's head comes off and flies at people? How perfect is that, because I was going to stick it on Freddy's decapitated body even back to when I was planning the 4/20 epilogue!

And of course there is the lunacy of the phone call. Since I was already planning on this one being completely bonkers, I figured it would be the best place to have some extremely self-deprecating humor. I wanted my own voice to come across as really whiny and pathetic, a guy who is really convinced of his own greatness and then just gets his ass handed to him in a verbal sparring match with his main character. I am so happy with how my personal role in this story turned out, even if it didn't exactly contribute much to anything. It was just a fun, really silly thing to do and hey, I got to give a shout out to a loyal fan too. That's always fun ;D

Regarding story info, here's my stance on what Golden Freddy said: he is as insane and nonsensical as he needs to be. He may or may not have actually been Fredrick the Bear, may or may not have been the killer, and may or may not have been the spirit in the oven in the first story's sequel hook. Basically, take every inch of his story with a grain of salt. If Scott confirms anything more specific about the game's backgrounds, assume that is true here too and whatever the hell Golden Freddy is is just out of his mind. That's my stance.

I wasn't sitting around waiting for _Five Nights 3_ to be confirmed to write this final chapter, but MAN did everything just fall into place wonderfully so it could. So many happy coincidences, so much fun stuff to work with, this series really is a blast to write for. And hey, it even inspired me to bring back ANOTHER comedy series I've wanted to return to. You can find my writing for _FMZ Mini Stories_ in the _Final Fantasy/Legend of Zelda_ crossover section with a hard M rating. It's so fun to be writing silly stuff again, and I honestly owe this return to Scott and Freddy. You guys haven't been around long, but you've done some spectacular work, and I really can't wait for the third game.

So on the last topic of the third game, there deserves to be a question of, _Will Dante 3 Freddy: The Rise of the Return of the Quickening actually happen?_

Short answer: No. Long answer:

I feel like Dante's part in this series is over. As much as I felt it was funny to see him more irate and annoyed in this one, I felt like this is all the farther he needs to be pushed. Dante has now defeated the animatronics two, sort of three times. Dragging him back for another round feels… Unnecessary and almost too cruel at this point. Dante's role here is finished, that much I think I'm confident in saying.

HOWEVER, I am not done writing these spoofs. I am gonna say it right now: I will write a parody for each and every Freddy game Scott makes. If he ends at three, so will I. If he makes a dozen, I will do the same. I just feel Dante has done everything I wanted him to with this series. Animatronic destruction will continue, I will spoof _Five Nights 3_ (again) when it comes out (I've learned my lesson and will not plan too far ahead again) and I honestly think Evie will be back for the third one. I'm not saying for sure at this point, it's kind of in limbo, but it's what I'm thinking right now. And I promise the name will not include a stupid _Batman V. Superman_ reference. Promise.

And then there's the rest of the Devil May Cry crossovers I've mentioned before. My stance at this point is they MIGHT still happen. Honestly, I REALLY need to get back to my original content, and those will come if I can master some more control over what I'm working on when. As for the moment, I'm planning to finish up _Angel of the Bat_ and then possibly be away from writing fanfiction for a little bit. We'll see what follows after that.

You can check me out on YouTube at HalfwayBeret, Deviantart at MnMichael and with my second account "TheFMZGuy," where I will be writing more twisted, hilarious comedy.

Thank you guys so much as always. This is Michael Joseph Tharnish Roby, signing off.


End file.
